I 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 


Books  by 
PHILIP    GIBBS 

MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 
NOW  IT  CAN  BE  TOLD 
PEOPLE  OF  DESTINY 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS,    NEW  YORK 
Established  1817 


More  That  Must  Be  Told 


-y 


By 

Philip    Qihhs 

Author  of 
"People  of  Dbstiny"  "Now  It  Can  Be  Told"  etc. 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS  PUBLISHERS 
NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON 


^ 


^ 


More  That  Mtw.  be  Tolo 


Copyrieht,  ipai.  by  Harper  &  Brother* 
Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 

M-V 


CONTENTS 

,^.«  PAGE 
CHAP.                                                                                                                    .     . 

I.  Leaders  of  the  Old  Tradition       i 

II.  Ideals  of  the  Humanists 5° 

III.  The  Need  of  the  Spirit 83 

IV.  The  New  Germany .'127 

V.  The  Price  of  Victory  in  France I7S 

VI.  The  Social  Revolution  in  English  Life    ....  213 

VII.  The  Warning  of  Austria       244 

VIII.  The  Truth  About  Ireland 260 

IX.  The  United  States  and  World  Peace 339 

X.  The  Chance  of  Youth 37° 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 


LEADERS    OF  THE   OLD  TRADITION 


LOOKING  back  at  the  three  years  of  history  after  the 
^  armistice — three  years  of  blundering,  moral  degra- 
dation, and  reaction  to  the  lowest  traditions  of  national 
politics — the  most  tolerant  of  minds  examining  into  the 
causes  of  that  evil  time  must  formulate  a  grave  in- 
dictment against  one  company  of  men.  Arraigned  before 
an  honest  jury  of  pubHc  opinion,  they  are  a  fairly  small 
gang  of  notorious  persons,  politically  of  doubtful  charac- 
ter and  shady  antecedents.  They  are  the  Leaders  of 
Europe — the  Old  Gang,  still  for  the  most  part  in  com- 
mand of  the  machinery  of  government. 

These  men  in  England,  France,  and  Italy  are  those 
who  were  playing  the  game  of  politics  before  the  war, 
fighting  for  place  and  power,  taking  their  turn,  now  in, 
now  out,  according  to  the  revolutions  of  the  party 
wheels,  but,  whether  in  or  out,  belonging  to  the  inner 
circle  of  that  system  which  under  the  fair  name  of 
"representative  government"  arranges  the  fate  of 
peoples  without  their  knowledge  or  consent,  and  by  art- 
ful appeals  to  popular  passion  and  ignorance,  by  spell 
words  and  watchwords  of  fine  sound  and  empty  mean- 
ing, keeps  the  mob  obedient  to  their  directing  wills,  even 

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MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

though  they  are  led  to  the  shambles  with  the  enticing 
cry  of,  "Dilly,  dilly,  come  and  be  killed." 

It  would  be  ridiculous  now  to  re-examine  all  the  psy- 
chological and  political  causes  of  the  European  war. 
That  argument  has  been  threshed  out  in  millions  and 
billions  of  words,  in  white  papers  and  yellow  papers 
and  red  papers,  and  in  spite  of  the  publication  of  secret 
documents  from  the  Russian  archives  and  the  papers  of 
other  governments  revealing  the  sinister  game  of  bluff 
and  bluster,  intrigue  and  conspiracy,  between  the  old 
courts  of  Europe,  it  is  certain,  if  anything  in  history  is 
certain,  that  nothing  will  ever  reverse  the  verdict  of 
guilty  given  against  the  German  military  caste  for  having 
planned,  desired,  and  made  the  war.  The  German 
bureaucracy  and  bourgeoisie  share  that  guilt  by  crim- 
inal consent,  though  the  peasants  and  common  folk 
must  be  acquitted  on  the  plea  of  ignorance  and  their 
inability  to  resist  the  poison  of  false  propaganda  adminis- 
tered to  them  by  their  rulers  and  teachers.  Let  us  leave 
it  there — this  terrible  verdict  against  which  there  is  no 
court  of  appeal  except  at  the  judgment  seat  of  God. 

But  the  statesmen  of  Europe  among  the  nations 
which  ranged  themselves  against  the  Germanic  power 
cannot  be  acquitted  of  all  guilt,  though  they  pleaded  a 
dovelike  innocence  when  the  frightful  challenge  of  war 
resounded  through  Europe  and  the  armies  moved  to  the 
fields  of  massacre.  They  were  guilty  of  maintaining, 
defending,  and  intensifying  the  old  regime  of  interna- 
tional rivalry,  with  its  political  structure  resting  entirely 
on  armed  force  and  as  damnably  guilty  of  hiding  from 
their  own  peoples  the  inevitability  of  the  conflict  which 
was  approaching  them  because  of  this  grouping  and 
maneuvering  of  forces. 

For  many  years  before  the  war  the  conscience  of 
people  without  power  in  many  countries  had  been 
stirred  by  the  spiritual  idea  of  a  closer  brotherhood  of 

2 


LEADERS  OF  THE  OLD  TRADITION 

man,  united  by  the  common  interests  of  labor  and  liberty. 
In  France  there  was  a  growing  revolt  against  the  burden 
of  militarism.  The  spirit  of  ''La  Revanche,'"  any  pas- 
sion of  desire  to  recapture  Alsace-Lorraine  at  the  cost 
of  millions  of  lives,  had  died  down  and  almost  out  in 
the  cold  ashes  of  extinct  fires.  In  Germany  the  Social 
Democrats,  quite  sincerely  despite  their  betrayal  after- 
ward, were  antimilitarists  and  the  advocates  of  inter- 
national peace.  In  England  the  people  were  so  devoid 
of  military  ambition,  so  sure  that  war  on  the  big  scale 
had  been  abandoned  forever  by  the  great  Powers  of 
white  civilization,  that  even  when  it  happened  they  were 
incredulous,  and  like  the  countryman  who  saw  a  giraflFe 
for  the  first  time,  said,  "Nell!  ...  I  don't  beheve  it!" 

The  statesmen  of  Europe — English,  French,  Ger- 
man, Russian,  and  others — might  have  allied  themselves 
with  the  new  idealism  stirring  among  the  common  folk 
of  Europe.  Some  of  them,  indeed,  paid  lip  service  to 
those  ideals  of  international  peace,  and  with  elaborate 
insincerity,  smiling  with  cynicism  up  their  sleeves,  pro- 
posed resolutions  at  The  Hague  to  restrict  the  horrors 
of  war  and  to  sprinkle  its  stench  with  rose-water.  But 
mostly,  and  with  intellectual  atheism,  they  used  the 
immense  and  secret  powers  of  their  governments  to 
kill  the  pacifist  instincts  of  democratic  idealism,  to  break 
or  buy  its  leaders,  and  to  secure  the  continuance  of  the 
old  game  between  courts  and  foreign  offices  for  com- 
mercial advantages,  military  alliances,  unexploited 
territories. 

These  men  of  the  Old  Gang  were  at  least  no  nobler 
than  their  predecessors  through  centuries  of  conflict. 
There  was  not  one  of  them  inspired  by  any  vision  of 
world  policy  higher  than  immediate  material  advantage 
or  imperial  aggrandizement.  Not  a  man  among  them, 
seeing  the  shadow  of  a  world  war  creeping  nearer,  ut- 
tered a  loud  cry  to  the  conscience  of  humanity  or  any 

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MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

warning  of  approaching  doom  or  any  plea  for  some 
better  argument  than  that  of  massacre.  They  were 
industrious  with  squalid  bargains  for  the  "undeveloped" 
spaces  of  the  earth  in  Africa  and  Asia.  From  one  foreign 
office  to  another  went  bickering  notes,  claims,  protests, 
and  threats.  The  Fashoda  crisis  menaced  England  with 
war  against  France.  The  Agadir  crisis,  twenty  years 
later,  was  a  challenge  to  Germany  by  England  and 
France — a  challenge  voiced  by  Lloyd  George,  the 
"leader  of  democracy,"  in  a  speech  which  summoned 
up  the  dreadful  vision  of  Armageddon  as  lightly,  as 
carelessly  as  men  might  tell  a  fantastic  nightmare 
across  the  dinner  table  as  a  warning  against  lobster 
salad.  It  seemed  so  to  the  British  people,  a  little  startled, 
but  not  shocked  into  the  tragic  consciousness  that  Lloyd 
George's  message  was  the  revelation  of  enormous  forces 
assembling  and  getting  ready  for  a  conflict  in  which  the 
3'outh  of  Europe,  ignorant  of  that  meaning,  not  told  in 
plain  words,  not  asked  for  consent,  v/ould  be  slain  by 
millions,  because  the  old  men  of  the  old  regime  were 
greedy  for  empire,  on  this  side  or  that. 

It  is  easy  to  say  that  Germany  was  the  wild  beast  of 
Europe,  with  devouring  instincts,  and  that  the  other 
nations  would  have  been  a  feebler  prey,  ready  for  the 
slaughterhouse,  if  they  had  been  more  weakened  by  the 
idealism  of  world  peace.  That  is  true.  So  is  it  true 
that  in  Napoleon's  time  France  was  the  wild  beast  of 
the  European  jungle,  and  in  other  times  other  nations. 
So  is  it  true  that  in  England  once  there  were  seven 
kings  at  war  with  one  another,  and  in  Ireland  sixty.  So 
is  it  true  that  a  century  ago  there  were  highwaymen  in 
Hyde  Park,  and  that  for  any  slight  off'ense  or  imagined 
insult  one  gentleman  would  challenge  another  and  kill 
him,  if  gifted  with  great  strength  or  skill  or  luck.  The 
history  of  civilization  is  a  gradual  taming  of  the  wild 
beast  in  human  society,  an  education  of  human  intelli- 

4 


LEADERS  OF  THE  OLD  TRADITION 

gence  to  a  widening  sphere  of  law  and  order  and  self- 
restraint.  So  it  seemed,  until  the  last  war  made  a 
mockery  of  lawmakers  and  of  gentlemen.  The  old 
men  of  Europe  (not  old  in  years,  but  in  traditions) 
made  never  an  effort  to  tame  the  wild  beast  in  the 
heart  of  Germany  (or  in  their  own),  never  once  raised 
ideals  to  which  the  German  people  might  rise  with  a 
sense  of  liberty  and  brotherhood  from  the  spell  of 
Junkerdom.  They  made  no  kind  of  effort  to  get  Euro- 
pean civilization  out  of  the  jungle  darkness  to  new 
clearing  places  of  light.  They  were  all  in  the  jungle 
together.  A  friend  of  mine  with  bitter  cynicism  com- 
pared the  international  politicians  before  the  war  with 
ape-men,  peering  out  of  their  caves,  gibbering  and 
beckoning  to  friendly  apes,  frothing  and  mouthing  to 
hostile  apes,  collecting  great  stores  of  weapons  for  de- 
fense and  offense,  strengthening  the  approaches  to  the 
monkey  rooks,  Hstening  with  fear  to  the  crashing  of 
the  Great  Ape  in  the  undergrowth  of  his  own  jungle, 
whispering  together  with  a  grave  nodding  of  heads,  a 
plotting  of  white  hairs,  while  the  young  apes  played 
among  the  trees  with  the  ignorance  and  carelessness  of 
youth. 

That  simile  is  an  outrage  upon  the  high  intelligence, 
the  fine  manners,  the  culture  and  refinement  of  the 
statesmen  who  directed  the  fate  of  Europe  before  the 
war — men  like  Grey,  Asquith,  Delcasse,  Poincare, 
Viviani,  Briand,  Giolitti.  Yet  outrageous  though  it  be, 
if  the  European  system  were  put  into  the  parable  of  the 
animal  world,  by  the  spirit  of  i^Esop  or  of  Swift  or  of 
Lafontaine,  it  is  with  jungle  life  and  with  ape  life  that 
it  could  only  be  compared. 

During  the  war  many  of  the  statesmen  of  the  coun- 
tries engaged  in  that  conflict  behaved  with  the  virtue 
that  belongs  to  patriotism  and  to  the  old  traditions  of 
national  honor,    I  do  not  underrate  that  virtue  or  those 

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MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

traditions.  In  their  time  and  when  necessity  demands 
them  they  call  out  the  supreme  qualities  of  manhood  in 
all  classes  directly  engaged.  When  once  the  war  was 
declared  and  we  were  back  again  to  the  primitive  con- 
test of  nation  against  nation,  there  was  no  other  way 
for  honorable  men  than  devotion  to  the  life  of  one's 
people,  the  highest  service  of  one's  soul  for  the  national 
cause,  self-sacrifice  even  to  death.  In  obedience  to  that 
last  law  of  patriotism,  youth,  the  best  of  European 
manhood,  answered  the  call  with  illimitable  courage, 
and  an  immense  spiritual  fervor  never  seen  on  such  a 
scale  in  human  history.  Without  a  murmur  of  revolt, 
upUfted  by  enthusiasm,  at  least  in  the  early  days  of  war, 
the  legions  of  British,  French,  Italian,  Russian,  and 
German  youth  marched  to  the  fields  of  death  and 
largely  died.  Diflferent  motives  impelled  them,  differ- 
ent professions  of  faith  were  theirs,  but  on  both  sides  of 
the  fighting  lines  there  was  the  one  common  primitive 
instinct  that  the  life  and  liberty  of  one's  people  could 
be  saved  only  by  the  death  of  the  enemy.  It  was  a  war 
to  the  death  without  mercy,  without  chivalry,  except  in 
rare  cases,  on  either  side — the  worst  war  the  world  has 
seen. 

II 

The  old  leaders  of  Europe  handed  over  a  great  deal 
of  their  directive  power  to  the  military  mind,  which 
despised  them  with  a  traditional  contempt  for  politi- 
cians, reciprocated  heartily  by  those  gentlemen  who 
were  impatient  with  the  rigid  self-conceit,  the  abrupt 
and  undiplomatic  manners,  the  complete  lack  of  sym- 
pathy and  candor  among  many  members  of  the  High 
Command.  In  all  countries  the  politicians  responsible 
for  the  civil  organization  of  the  state  complained  bit- 
terly of  the  autocratic  methods,  the  intellectual  narrow- 
ness of  the  military  command.     In  all  countries  the 

6 


LEADERS  OF  THE  OLD  TRADITION 

High  Command — German,  French,  British — accused  the 
politicians  of  "betraying"  them  and  undermining  the 
chances  of  victory. 

Outwardly  a  political  truce  had  been  called  in  all 
countries.  Party  opposition  had  been  silenced  by  Coali- 
tion governments  in  which  all  parties  were  represented. 
There  was  what  the  French  called  "L'Union  Sacree" 
before  the  enemy.  Secretly,  and  with  but  a  thin  camou- 
flage of  decency,  there  were  continual  intrigues,  con- 
spiracies, and  plots  among  the  various  groups  of  po- 
litical personalities,  aided  and  abetted  by  people  of  high 
rank  and  social  influence.  In  France  and  England  in- 
trigues were  rife  in  the  Cabinet  and  the  War  Office. 
Kitchener  was  beset  by  enemies  in  high  places  and  low 
places  intent  upon  pulling  him  down  by  fair  means  or 
foul.  The  early  failures  of  the  war,  the  ghastly  mis- 
takes, the  endless  slaughter,  called  for  victims.  Every 
man  in  public  life,  and  every  woman  of  social  influence, 
backed  his  or  her  fancy  for  the  War  Ministry,  the  Com- 
mander in  Chief,  the  chief  of  staff",  the  army,  corps,  or 
divisional  generals,  and  had  a  private  personal  alle- 
giance to  this  man  or  that,  or  a  bitter  vindictive  grudge 
against  him.  There  were  cabals  for  and  against  Kitch- 
ener and  Robertson,  French  and  Haig,  Fisher  and  Jelli- 
coe.  Newspaper  editors  were  invited  to  breakfast, 
luncheon,  dinner,  by  ministers  of  state  and  generals  of 
the  High  Command,  in  order  to  enlist  their  influence 
by  subtle  suggestions  in  leading  articles,  or  personal 
paragraphs  or  open  attacks,  for  or  against  the  latest 
favorite  or  the  latest  scapegoat.  Military  critics,  war 
correspondents  home  on  leave.  Parliamentary  corre- 
spondents and  lobby  men,  were  favored  by  these  danger- 
ous attentions.  The  press  became  a  hotbed  of  favoritism 
and  conspiracy.  The  commanders  in  the  field,  Joff"re 
as  well  as  French,  Retain  as  well  as  Haig,  endeavored  to 
counter-attack  the  conspirators  by  forming  their  own 

7 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

bodyguard  of  political  adherents,  and  directing  the  press. 
Colonel  Repington,  military  critic  of  the  Times,  busy  as 
Warwick  the  king-maker,  was  invited  to  Sir  John 
French's  headquarters  and  told  all  the  secret  history  of 
the  relations  between  the  Commander  in  Chief  and  the 
Secretary  of  War.  The  war  correspondent  of  the  Daily 
Mail  (at  that  time  Mr.  Valentine  WiUiams,  afterward 
a  captain  in  the  Irish  Guards)  was  also  a  "white-headed 
boy"  at  the  headquarters  of  Sir  John  French.  The 
Daily  Mail  worked  up  a  sensation  about  the  shortage 
of  high-explosive  shells  and  attacked  Lord  Kitchener 
with  a  ferocity  which  for  a  while  so  angered  the  British 
public  that  they  burned  their  favorite  paper  in  public 
places — and   then   renewed   their  subscriptions. 

Sir  John  French's  enemies  were  too  strong  for  him 
after  the  ghastly  failure  of  the  Loos  battle.  Haig's 
friends  triumphed;  Robertson  succeeded  in  supreme 
command  when  Kitchener  was  drowned,  to  the  great 
relief  of  many  patriots.  Major-General  Sir  Frederic 
Maurice,  on  Sir  John  French's  staff  until  his  fall,  was 
raised  to  a  higher  place  as  Director  of  Military  Opera- 
tions on  the  Imperial  General  Staff,  under  Sir  William 
Robertson.  Then  another  set  of  intrigues  went  on,  and 
never  finished  until  the  ending  of  the  war.  Asquith, 
hounded  down  by  the  Daily  Mail  and  betrayed  by  his 
own  supporters,  was  succeeded  by  Lloyd  George  as 
Prime  Minister  of  England.  Then  Repington,  the  cor- 
respondent, wonderfully  confidential  with  Robertson, 
Chief  of  the  Imperial  General  Staff,  in  close  liaison  with 
Maurice,  Director  of  Military  Operations,  conducted  a 
long-range  attack  upon  the  new  Prime  Minister  for  his 
conduct  of  the  war,  and  revealed  the  most  jealously 
guarded  secrets  of  the  Supreme  War  Council.  Haig  in 
France,  obstinate  against  the  idea  of  a  unified  com- 
mand which  would  place  him  under  the  authority  of 
a  French  generalissimo,  conscious  that  Lloyd  George 

8 


LEADERS  OF  THE  OLD  TRADITION 

had  little  faith  in  his  generalship  after  the  enormous 
slaughter  of  the  Somme  battles  and  the  still  more  fright- 
ful losses  in  Flanders,  had  his  attention  diverted  from 
the  state  of  his  front  to  the  political  danger  behind 
him.  With  Retain  in  command  of  the  French  armies, 
he  was  arranging  plans  which  would  keep  Foch  out  of 
supreme  command — a  system  of  mutual  defense  which 
broke  down  utterly  when  the  Germans  attacked  in 
March  of  1918  and  nearly  won  the  war. 

Officers  home  on  leave,  hearing  some  of  those  rumors  of 
intrigue  and  private  rancor,  could  not  reconcile  the  spirit 
of  it  with  the  marvelous  optimism  of  public  men — those 
very  people — in  public  print.  I  remember  dining  with 
Lord  Burnham  in  London  of  war  time.  I  had  come  home 
on  leave  from  the  mud  of  Flanders,  where  I  had  seen 
the  tragic  slaughter  of  our  youth,  the  daily  harvest  of 
the  wounded  boys.  I  had  no  notion  that  it  was  more 
than  a  tete-a-tete  with  Lord  Burnham  at  the  Garrick 
Club,  so,  coming  up  from  the  country  and  arriving  late 
in  town,  did  not  put  on  evening  clothes.  It  was  a  hu- 
miliation to  me  (more  hurtful  to  one's  vanity  than  moral 
delinquency)  when  I  found  a  company  of  great  people, 
including  Sir  William  Robertson,  Lord  Charles  Beresford 
(old  "Charlie  B.,"  as  he  was  always  called),  and  a 
variety  of  peers  and  politicians  who  were  helping  in 
divers  ways  and  offices  to  "win  the  war."  They  were 
the  people,  anyhow,  who  pulled  many  wires  of  our 
imperial  activities,  knew  all  the  secrets  of  the  war  on 
land  and  sea,  and  held  in  their  hands  the  decision  of 
peace,  if  there  ever  could  be  peace,  which  then  seemed 
doubtful.  My  ears  were  alert  to  catch  any  words  of 
hope  which  might  be  a  reprieve  to  thousands  of  boys — 
those  I  passed  daily  on  the  Albert-Bapaume  road  and 
other  highways  of  abomination — who  otherwise  would 
be  condemned  to  death.  These  people  knew  whether 
the  Germans  were  weakening.  To  them  came  all  the 
2  9 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

reports  of  spies,  the  ** peace  feelers"  through  neutral 
countries,  the  secret  views  of  our  allies,  beneath 
official  proclamations  and  triumphant  propaganda. 
God!  Here  I  was  in  the  company  of  those  who  held  the 
keys  of  knowledge  and  the  power  of  fate  in  this  great 
drama  of  tragic  history. 

They  talked  freely.  One  to  another  they  kept  the 
conversation  going  without  a  pause.  Only  one  man 
was  silent,  and  that  w^as  Robertson.  I  made  out  that 
the  navy  was  not  doing  well.  That  the  sinking  of  our 
ships  by  German  submarines  was  more  serious  than  the 
nation  knew.  (Not  good  news,  I  thought,  for  the  boys 
at  the  front!)  Haig  seemed  to  be  hopeless.  His  battles 
were  bloody  but  indecisive.  It  was  nonsense  to  make 
out  that  we  were  winning.  It  was  mere  folly  to  pretend 
that  our  losses  were  lighter  than  the  enemy's.  The  Ger- 
mans still  had  immense  reserves  of  man  power.  (So  the 
optimism  of  our  Chief  of  Intelligence  did  not  cheer  the 
company!)  The  French  were  troublesome  again,  letting 
us  down  deliberately,  not  working  in  close  or  loyal 
liaison,  intriguing  for  supreme  command.  Our  reserves 
were  wearing  pretty  thin,  in  spite  of  the  high  percentage 
of  recovery  among  lightly  wounded  men.  The  war  might 
go  on  easily  for  another  two  years,  or  three,  if  the 
peoples  did  not  break  before  then.  ...  I  listened  with  a 
sinking  heart.  This  was  gloomy  and  dreadful  talk, 
more  gloomy  than  my  own  forebodings  in  miserable 
hours.  Here  was  no  hope  for  boys  I  knew  who  would 
be  marching  to-night  to  the  line  again,  sitting  again  in 
the  dirty  ditches  under  infernal  fire,  praying  with  blas- 
phemous oaths  for  some  miracle  that  would  bring  them 
a  reprieve  and  peace. 

"Well,  gentlemen,"  said  Sir  William  Robertson  at 
last,  "you  are  all  very  pessimistic!  All  I  can  say  is  if 
we're  a  bit  winded,  the  enemy  is  just  as  puffed.  It's  a 
case  of  who  holds  on  the  longest." 

lO 


LEADERS  OF  THE  OLD  TRADITION 

One  man  there  had  written  to  the  Times  that  very 
day  ridiculing  the  German  "peace"  offers  and  pro- 
claiming our  certainty  of  victory  in  the  end.  He  had 
no  certainty  of  faith  at  dinner  that  night,  but  spoke 
despairingly.  Through  all  the  conversation  there  was 
a  note  of  querulous  irritation  against  the  men  in  high 
command,  hardly  camouflaged  even  against  Robertson, 
sitting  there  with  them,  not  answering  their  criticism  of 
failure  and  loss. 

It  was  a  rainy  night,  and  dark  in  Garrick  Street  when 
I  went  out.  A  soldier  home  on  leave  lurched  by  drunk- 
enly  and  uttered  a  foul  oath.  Away  in  Flanders  his 
pals  would  be  listening  to  "crumps"  and  the  whining 
of  high  velocities  passing  overhead  and  the  hiss  of  the 
gas  shells.  The  stretcher-bearers  would  be  busy  with 
the  usual  casualties — arm  wounds,  stomach  wounds, 
gassed,  the  ordinary  muck  of  a  night's  work  in  the 
line.  ...  I  had  no  hope  to  take  out  to  them.  Our  leaders 
were  just  carrying  on,  hoping  for  the  odd  trick  after 
years  more  of  slaughter.  "Just  a  question,"  said 
Robertson,  "of  who  holds  out  the  longest."  That  was 
the  highest  hope  of  our  highest  Generalship!  .  .  ,  And 
Robertson  was  right. 

Tragic  history!  Is  it  worth  while  washing  so  much 
dirty  linen  in  public  as  that  exposed  to  the  vulgar  gaze 
in  the  memoirs  of  Colonel  Repington,  Captain  Peter 
Wright,  Doctor  Dillon,  and  many  others?  There  is 
only  one  purpose  to  be  served,  and  that  was  not,  I 
think,  Repington's  purpose.  It  is  to  give  a  frightful 
warning  to  the  world  that  the  leaders  who  were  respon- 
sible for  the  destiny  of  civilization  in  that  time  of 
monstrous  conflict  were  unsafe  guides,  uncertain  of 
their  own  way,  distrustful  of  one  another.  They  were 
but  httle  men  playing  a  game  of  hazard  with  millions  of 
lives.  They  had,  with  few  exceptions,  no  vision  greater 
than  the  safety  of  their  own  jobs  and  the  continuance 

II 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

of  their  own  prestige.  These  same  men,  long  in  power 
after  all  their  failures,  their  intrigues,  and  their  errors, 
proved  themselves  incapable  of  leading  the  way  to  new 
heights  which  we  must  attain  unless  we  resign  ourselves 
to  a  deeper  sinking  into  the  abyss  of  ruin.  There  was 
no  spiritual  light  in  them,  not  much  of  nobility,  no  in- 
spiration of  genius.  They  groped  and  fumbled  their 
way  to  victory  which  came  by  the  valor  of  the  youth 
that  died,  and  then  was  worthless  because  of  what  they 
have  done  with  it.  They  put  out  the  best  that  was  in 
them,  but  it  was  not  good  enough — not  big  enough, 
without  virtue. 

Ill 

There  never  was  a  time  in  modern  history  when 
there  was  such  a  readiness  for  spiritual  guidance  among 
the  peoples  of  Europe.  Their  guides  led  them  into 
degradation.  They  appealed  to  the  lowest  instincts  of 
human  nature,  and  not  to  the  highest.  Dehberately 
they  chose  the  lowest. 

It  began  with  the  Peace  Treaty.  That  document, 
which,  for  a  little  while,  had  been  the  promise  of  a  new 
great  charter  for  the  liberties  of  common  folk  in  all  na- 
tions, was  discovered  to  be  nothing  better  than  the 
intensification  of  old  hatreds  by  new  frontiers,  and  the 
aggrandizement  of  victorious  powers  by  the  dismember- 
ment of  defeated  empires.  Not  deliberately,  I  think, 
but  as  a  compromise  of  greedy  interests  in  conflict,  it 
violated  in  a  hundred  ways  the  principles  proclaimed  by 
President  Wilson  as  the  ideals  of  peace,  and  accepted, 
for  a  little  while,  by  victors  and  vanquished.  What  be- 
came of  the  self-determination  of  peoples?  Austria  was 
put  under  Italian  rule  and  Czech  rule  and  Slovak  rule, 
Germans  under  Poles,  Turks  under  Greeks,  Arabs  under 
French  and  British.  It  was  not  a  Peace  for  the  rebuilding 
of  civilization  out  of  the  ruins  upon  nobler  lines,  but  a 

12 


LEADERS  OF  THE  OLD  TRADITION 

Peace  of  vengeance,  and  a  Peace  of  greed,  and  a  Peace 
of  hypocrisy. 

The  old  politicians  who  had  played  the  game  of 
politics  before  the  war,  gambling  with  the  lives  and  souls 
of  men  for  new  territory,  privileged  markets,  oil  fields, 
native  races,  coaling  stations,  and  imperial  prestige, 
grabbed  the  pool  which  the  German  gamblers  had  lost 
when  their  last  bluff  was  called,  and  quarreled  over  its 
distribution.  The  "mandates"  obtained  by  Great 
Britain  and  France  in  Africa  and  Asia  made  the  cynics 
chortle  with  laughter  and  the  politicians  of  the  smaller 
powers  squirm  with  envy.  Italy  denounced  them  all 
as  robbers  because  her  share  of  loot  was  small.  France 
was  aggrieved  with  England  because  she  had  taken  the 
lion's  share.  But  the  statesmen  of  Europe  dividing 
the  world  afresh,  and  reconciling  their  spoils  with  the 
high  words  of  justice  and  retribution,  imagined  in  their 
ignorance  of  world  conditions  after  a  war  of  exhaustion 
that  what  they  took  they  could  hold,  and  that  out  of  the 
ruin  of  their  enemies  they  could  gain  great  wealth.  They 
did  not  understand  then,  nor  after  three  years  do  they 
now  understand,  that  not  only  all  their  own  wealth  was 
spent  in  four  and  a  half  years  of  destruction,  but  that 
all  the  former  wealth  of  Europe,  in  all  nations  engaged 
in  the  conflict,  had  disappeared  in  shell  fire  and  in  blood. 

Not  to  them  was  it  revealed  that  the  paper  money 
which  circulated  in  European  countries  was  but  a  re- 
minder of  enormous  debt,  unredeemed  and  unredeem- 
able, and  a  promissory  note  on  the  future  industry  of 
peoples.  No  single  statesman  of  the  old  regime  helping 
to  draw  up  the  Treaty  of  Versailles  had  intelligence 
enough  to  see,  or  honesty  enough  to  admit,  that  after 
the  scourge  that  had  passed  over  Europe,  killing  the 
flower  of  its  youth,  its  young  tillers  of  the  soil,  its 
laborers,  only  mutual  helpfulness  between  one  nation 
and  another,  former  friends  and  enemies,  could  bring 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

a  chance  of  recovery  and  economic  health.  The  com- 
plete ruin  of  Austria,  condemned  to  death  by  the  Peace 
Treaty,  did  but  place  a  pauper  population  upon  the 
books  of  the  "Reparations  Committee."  It  was  just  a 
hospital  of  starving  children  and  a  casual  ward  of  adult 
unemployed,  unable  to  buy  from  us  or  anyone,  unable 
to  work  for  themselves  or  us  (because  they  could  not 
buy  the  raw  material  of  industry),  just  lapsing  into 
decay  and  death,  whose  corruption  would  spread  to  sur- 
rounding countries. 

So  little  did  the  politicians  know  of  economic  laws  in 
modern  commerce,  that  they  did  not  foresee  the  loss  to 
their  own  trades  in  the  closing  of  enemy  markets,  nor 
the  futility  of  their  own  industry  if  there  were  no  cus- 
tomers to  buy  their  products.  They  did  not  even  guess 
that  by  enlarging  their  imperial  territory,  in  "man- 
dates" over  races  who  disliked  them,  they  were  relying 
upon  armies  that  could  not  be  raised  (unless  we  raised 
the  dead)  and  wasting  more  millions  of  borrowed  money 
in  new  administration,  when  their  imperial  treasury  was 
empty  except  of  unpaid  debts,  and  the  citizens  of  empire 
were  already  in  revolt  against  the  tax  collectors. 

Yet  we  must  be  fair  to  the  leaders  of  the  old  tradition. 
Looking  at  the  Treaty  of  Versailles  upon  the  plane  of 
thought  no  higher  than  that  of  the  statesmen  who 
framed  it — that  is,  as  a  document  carving  up  Europe 
according  to  the  old  ethics  of  victors  deahng  with  van- 
quished and  demanding  retribution  and  reparation,  it 
is  difficult  to  see,  except  in  minor  details  of  unnecessary 
injustice,  how  a  better  peace  could  have  been  made. 
The  convulsion  of  Europe  had  been  so  great,  the  conflict 
so  widespread,  that  the  structure  of  human  society 
everywhere  had  been  immensely  upheaved  and  no 
group  of  politicians  thinking  upon  the  old  lines  of 
thought,  each  trying  to  make  the  best  bargain  for  his 
own  nation  or  empire,  and  to  secure  immediate  advan- 

14 


LEADERS  OF  THE  OLD  TRADITION 

tage  without  much  thought  of  the  future  or  the  com- 
monwealth of  Europe,  could  reconcile  all  conflicting 
interests,  rearrange  frontiers  on  reasonable  lines,  and 
safeguard  the  economic  life  of  all  peoples.  Such  an  ideal 
arrangement  was  indeed  impossible  of  achievement, 
owing  to  the  geographical  confusion  of  races  and  na- 
tionalities. Therefore  all  criticism  of  the  Peace  Treaty 
is  futile,  if  it  is  conducted  on  the  basis  of  the  old  philos- 
ophy of  international  relations  in  Europe  with  its  balance 
of  power,  its  rival  groups,  and  the  claim  of  the  victor  to 
exact  the  price  of  war  from  the  vanquished. 

The  hope  which  for  a  little  while  leaped  up  in  the 
hearts  of  many  people  was  for  a  Treaty  which  would 
give  a  new  call  to  humanity  and,  leading  it  clear  away 
from  its  old  jungle  law,  would  break  down  the  old 
frontiers,  demobilize  armed  force  everywhere,  and 
unite  the  democracies  of  Europe  in  the  common  interests 
of  labor,  liberty,  and  peace.  Whether  the  peoples  of 
Europe  could  have  risen  to  such  an  ideal  at  that  time  is 
uncertain.  The  mere  thought  of  "letting  off"  Ger- 
many would  have  aroused  fury  among  the  Chauvinists 
in  France,  England,  and  the  United  States.  It  is  im- 
possible to  say  with  any  sure  evidence  whether  the 
people  of  Europe  would  have  been  capable  of  rising  to  a 
height  of  idealism  which,  as  we  now  see,  would  have 
been  also  good  business  on  the  most  materialistic  lines, 
as  true  idealism  is  always  good  business  according  to  the 
old  adage  that  honesty  is  the  best  policy,  and  the 
Christian  precept,  "Do  unto  others  as  you  would  have 
them  do  unto  you." 

A  mutual  cancellation  of  our  debts  by  a  stroke  of  the 
pen  in  the  Treaty  would  have  been  a  supreme  act  of 
faith  in  the  future  of  humanity  which  would  have 
lighted  the  soul  of  the  world.  Yet  in  a  niggling  way, 
by  the  sheer  impossibility  of  paying  even  the  interest 
on  those  debts,  or  of  extracting  reparation  out  of  the 

IS 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

ruin  of  Austria,  and  getting  a  healthy  interchange 
of  commerce,  we  are  bound  to  come  to  that  in  the  long 
run,  without  any  light  of  splendid  renunciation  in  the 
soul  of  the  world,  but  only  lamentation  and  recrim- 
ination. 

The  rapid  demobilization  of  armies  in  France  as  well 
as  in  Germany  would  have  been  another  act  of  faith, 
helpful  and  glorious  to  the  life  of  Europe.  Militarism 
would  have  been  dethroned,  so  that  the  purpose  pro- 
claimed by  us  in  the  war  would  have  been  fulfilled.  In 
a  practical  way  it  would  have  saved  France  more  than 
she  will  ever  get  from  Germany  and  helped  her  to  recon- 
struct more  rapidly  the  devastated  districts  which  are 
still  in  ruins. 

A  spiritual  appeal  to  the  German  people,  not  based 
on  threats  of  force,  but  calling  with  the  voice  of  one 
people  to  another  across  the  fields  of  dead,  might  have 
been  answered  by  the  offer  of  a  whole  nation  to  repair 
the  damage  they  had  done,  to  atone  by  immense  self- 
sacrifice  and  service,  because  of  the  liberation  of  their 
spirit  from  hatred  and  from  bondage  to  evil  ideas  in  a 
new  era  of  fellowship  after  the  agony  of  universal  war. 
On  the  plane  of  realism  it  would  have  been  better  busi- 
ness, for  the  Allies  would  have  gained  more  by  consent 
than  they  have  gained  by  force,  and  the  impulse  to 
vengeance,  burning  and  smoldering  in  the  heart  of 
Germany  now,  after  so  many  threats  and  so  much 
hatred,  might  not  have  existed,  but  might  have  been 
melted  away  in  the  enthusiasm  of  the  new-found  move- 
ment of  humanity. 

IV 

Such  idealism  was  impossible  without  great  leader- 
ship, a  spiritual  leader  so  high  in  virtue,  so  on  fire 
with  human  charity,  so  clear  and  shining  in  vision  that 
the  people  of  Europe  would  have  been  caught  up  and 

i6 


LEADERS  OF  THE  OLD  TRADITION 

carried  on  by  his  call  to  the  New  World.  If  we  had  had 
such  a  man,  I  believe  firmly  in  my  soul  that  this  would 
have  happened.  For  at  that  time,  immediately  before 
the  armistice,  and  for  a  little  while  afterward,  there 
was  a  mass  emotion  in  Europe,  after  the  long  agony  of 
the  years,  which  would  have  risen  to  any  great  call. 
Europe  was  stricken,  shell  shocked,  hysterical.  And  it 
is  by  the  emotion  of  peoples  that  great  leaders  are 
able  to  fulfill  their  aspirations.  In  millions  of  homes 
families  were  mourning  their  dead,  aghast  at  the  cruelty 
of  life,  hopeless  except  for  a  vague  hope  of  spiritual 
revival.  The  women  of  the  world  had  wept  until  they 
had  no  more  tears  to  weep.  The  fighting  men,  no  longer 
filled  with  blood  lust,  if  any  of  them  ever  were,  for  more 
than  the  minutes  of  killing  and  terror,  sick  of  the  stench 
of  death,  contemptuous  of  the  honors  and  glories  of 
their  job,  cynical  of  civilization,  looking  forward  to 
some  new  scheme  of  life  which  would  prevent  this  kind 
of  thing  from  happening  ever  again,  were  in  a  mood  to 
abandon  all  the  old  fetishes  of  thought  which  caused 
this  conflict,  and  to  advance  to  a  greater  victory  by 
which  the  beauty  and  joy  of  life  could  be  recaptured. 
But  we  had  no  leaders  to  take  advantage  of  that  enor- 
mous stirring  of  thought  and  feeling  among  the  people 
of  the  stricken  nations  so  that  they  might  have  been 
lifted  out  of  the  old  ruts.    Alas!    Alas! 

There  seemed  for  a  little  while  to  be  one.  It  was  Pres- 
ident Wilson,  the  only  man  in  the  world  who,  before  the 
armistice,  WTOte  words  which  rang  true  in  the  heart  of 
humanity.  In  dirty  places  where  men  lived  under  the 
imminent  menace  of  death  they  were  read,  as  I  know, 
with  hopefulness  that  here  at  last  was  a  leader  who  had 
a  greater  vision  than  a  war  of  extermination  or  a  peace 
of  vengeance.  His  words  were  like  a  new  Gospel,  or 
the  old  Gospel  recalled  in  this  time  of  hatred  and  mas- 
sacre.   He  looked  across  the  frontiers  of  hostility,  offered 

17 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

just  terms  to  all  warring  nations,  promised  a  new  world 
to  democracy  if  it  would  disown  the  evil  of  its  ruling 
powers.  Among  millions  of  men,  to  youth  being  sacri- 
ficed, in  millions  of  homes,  death-haunted,  on  both  sides 
of  No-Man's  Land,  his  words  found  instant  response. 
They  raised  enormous  hopes.  They  had  a  spiritual, 
almost  a  divine  sweetness.  The  Germans,  below  the 
Junker  caste,  the  German  soldiers  whom  I  met  on  the 
battlefields,  whose  letters  I  grabbed  from  lousy  dug- 
outs or  picked  up  as  they  littered  the  shell-churned 
earth,  put  their  faith  in  Wilson,  hailed  him  as  the  great 
arbitrator,  accepted  in  their  souls  his  terms  of  peace. 
I  affirm  that  with  absolute  belief.  Before  the  armistice 
they  raised  banners  in  many  cities  of  Germany  proclaim- 
ing their  adherence  to  Wilson's  "Fourteen  Points."  After 
the  armistice  for  a  little  while,  until  one  by  one  the 
Fourteen  Points  were  abandoned  or  betrayed,  they  clam- 
ored for  their  fulfillment. 

I  saw  Wilson  come  to  London.  It  was  as  though  a 
savior  of  the  world  were  passing.  Miles  deep  the 
crowd  stood  and  waited  while  he  passed.  Only  the  fore- 
most ranks  caught  a  glimpse  of  his  silvered  hairs.  But 
from  all  those  vast  crowds  came  a  roar  of  cheers  in  which 
there  was  a  note  I  had  never  heard  before,  and  the  eyes 
of  people  about  me  were  wet  with  tears.  So  it  was  in 
Paris  when  he  came. 

We  all  know  now  how  he  failed  in  many  ways,  why 
he  failed — his  hard,  autocratic  temper,  so  that  even  his 
advisers  like  House  and  Lansing  were  kept  in  ignorance 
of  his  acts  and  pledges,  the  vanity  which  made  him 
weaken  to  flattery,  the  pedagogic  quality  of  his  brain, 
the  fatal  egotism  which  caused  him  to  neglect  the  or- 
dinary safeguards  of  statesmanship — consultation  with 
his  people  and  winning  of  their  consent,  the  right  and 
liberty  of  their  Senate  and  Congress.  He  had  the 
greatest  chance  that  any  man  has  had  in  the  whole  his- 

i8 


LEADERS  OF  THE  OLD  TRADITION 

tory  of  the  world,  and  he  missed  it.  But  his  people 
missed  it  too,  by  the  bitterness  of  their  political  pas- 
sion, by  desertion  of  their  representative  (who  should 
have  had  their  loyalty  in  this  crisis  of  the  world's  fate 
in  spite  of  all  his  errors),  and  by  a  cruelty  which  killed 
him  as  a  leader  and  almost  killed  him  as  a  man. 

All  that  is  old  and  tragic  history.  There  is  nothing 
new  to  be  said  about  it,  but  its  tragedy  remains,  and 
makes  more  difficult  the  task  of  human  progress  which 
then  was  easier  because  of  that  mass  emotion  leaping 
up  to  hope.  Quickly  came  disillusionment,  cynicism,  a 
hark  back  to  material  and  selfish  interests.  The  lowest 
passions  of  humanity  were  prodded  up  by  the  press  and 
by  the  politicians.  The  noblest  so'ds  in  England  in  all 
classes  were  sickened  and  dumfounded  by  the  moral 
depravity  of  the  appeals  made  to  the  beast  instinct  of 
the  mob  by  ministers  of  state  and  all  their  sycophants. 
In  the  khaki  election  of  191 8,  which  gave  Lloyd  George 
a  renewal  of  his  power,  there  was  the  promise  of  great 
loot  from  the  enemy's  treasure  and  the  Kaiser's  head 
was  to  be  the  reward  of  victory.  The  ideals  for  which 
youth  had  fought  in  the  war,  at  least  the  watchwords 
which  had  urged  them  to  fight — the  war  to  end  war,  the 
downfall  of  militarism — were  flung  away  and  forgotten. 
The  material  motive  of  making  Germany  pay  for  all 
the  costs  of  war  of  all  the  victor  nations  replaced  the 
better  hope  of  establishing  a  lasting  peace  between  the 
democracies  of  Europe. 

Germany  will  be  squeezed,"  said  Sir  Eric  Geddes, 
until  the  pips  squeak" — a  naked  betrayal  of  Wilson's 
pledge  to  German  democracy  which  we  had  counter- 
signed with  our  honor.  Facilis  decensus  Averni.  The 
people  who  were  ready  for  spiritual  guidance  yielded 
when  appeal  was  made  to  the  brute  in  them.  They 
share  the  guilt  of  this  degradation  and  are  paying  for  it 
now,  but  the  greater  guilt  is  that  of  men  who,  seeing 

19 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

the  light,  chose  the  darkness.     The  old  leaders  stand 
condemned.     Theirs  was  the  steepest  downfall. 

The  story  of  President  Wilson  is  tragic.  Yet  he  never 
hauled  down  the  banner  of  his  idealism,  and,  torn  and 
tattered  though  it  was  after  his  single  fight  with  enemies 
in  front  and  behind,  he  nailed  it  to  the  mast  with  his 
crippled  hand  and  never  surrendered  in  his  poor,  dazed 
soul.  He  was  faithful  to  the  League  of  Nations,  though 
his  people  would  have  none  of  it.  In  spite  of  their 
abandonment,  weakened  by  the  immense  loss  of  their 
alliance,  the  League  of  Nations  still  lives  and  struggles 
in  a  futile  way  against  unequal  odds,  and  is  a  memorial 
of  the  spirit  which  created  it  as  the  best  hope  of  the 
world.  Even  now  it  might  become  the  machine  by 
which  youth  could  re-create  the  world. 


A-' 


Greater  than  the  tragedy  of  Mr.  Wilson  was  that 
of  the  other  signatories  of  the  Peace  Treaty,  whom, 
having  pledged  themselves  to  the  League  of  Nations 
with  the  consent  of  their  nations,  mocked  at  it  with 
cynical  laughter,  flouted  its  authority,  undermined  its 
purpose,  and  maintained  the  power  of  the  Supreme 
Council,  whose  will  and  acts  have  been  in  direct  and 
open  conflict  with  the  whole  spirit  of  the  League. 
They  upheld  government  by  force  alone,  whereas  the 
League  is  based  on  government  by  arbitration  and  con', 
sent.  They  denied  the  rights  of  small  nations  to  a  voice 
in  the  councils  of  the  world  by  declaring  the  will  of  the 
great  victor  powers  enforced  by  standing  armies.  By 
sending  representatives  without  authority  to  the  as- 
sembly of  the  League,  they  deprived  it  of  all  reality  in  its 
decisions  and  of  all  influence  in  the  settlement  of  world 
problems.     They  betrayed  it. 

Tragic  was  the  physical  breakdown  of  Wilson,  Presi- 

20 


LEADERS  OF  THE  OLD  TRADITION 

dent  of  the  United  States.  More  tragic  was  the  spiritual 
surrender  of  Lloyd  George,  Prime  Minister  of  England. 

It  is  hard  for  English  people  to  speak  or  to  v/rite  about 
Lloyd  George  without  passion — passion  of  dislike  or 
passion  of  hero  worship.  There  have  been  times  when 
most  have  hated  him,  but  it  is  significant  that  the 
people  who  hated  him  once  because  of  the  things  for 
which  I  and  others  liked  him  (his  democratic  audacity, 
his  amusing  vulgarity  of  challenge  to  the  snob  tradition 
of  England)  are  now  those  who  like  him  most.  I  hated 
him  for  his  speech  about  the  *' Knock-out  blow"  at  a 
time  when  there  seemed  no  ending  to  war  except  by  the 
extermination  of  the  world's  youth.  I  hated  him  after- 
ward for  helping  to  arrange  a  peace  which  seemed  to 
me  to  guarantee  the  certainty  of  new  and  more  dreadful 
war.  I  hated  him  for  handing  over  the  fate  of  Ireland 
to  men  like  Sir  Edward  Carson,  Hamar  Greenwood,  Sir 
John  French,  General  Tudor,  and  the  gang  of  bureau- 
crats and  brass  hats  in  Dublin  Castle  who  tried  to 
break  the  spirit  of  a  passionate  people  by  methods  of 
Prussian  militarism,  and  tried  to  stamp  out  the  Sinn 
Fein  terror  by  a  counter-terror  which  stoked  up  its  fires, 
put  murderous  hatred  in  the  heart  of  every  Irish  youth, 
made  martyrs  of  those  who  died,  and  dishonored  the 
old  fame  of  England  by  an  abandonment  of  justice, 
chivalry,  and  the  spirit  of  liberty  for  which  so  much  of 
English  youth  had  died.  For  that  I  hated  Lloyd  George, 
and  sometimes  I  think  I  hate  him  still. 

Yet  analyzing  my  own  feelings  I  find,  as  so  many  of 
his  political  opponents  find,  that  not  hatred,  but  admira- 
tion strangely  mingled  with  regret,  affection  twisted  by 
anger  and  annoyance,  amusement  causing  laughter 
with  a  groan  in  it,  are  my  dominant  impressions  of  this 
amazing  little  man.  The  straight  principles  of  honorable 
men  are  warped  under  his  influence.  They  weakened, 
as  I  have  seen  them,  visibly,  under  the  spell  of  his  babe- 

21 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

blue  eyes.  Men  go  into  his  room  cursing  him  in  their 
hearts,  determined  to  resist  his  blandishments,  reso- 
lutely fixed  to  arguments  and  facts  and  convictions  from 
which  they  will  not  budge.  In  less  than  an  hour  with 
him  they  have  resisted  nothing,  have  budged  from  all 
their  fixed  points,  and  come  out  looking  sheepish,  smiling 
weakly,  saying,  "Marvelous!"  Time  and  time  again 
that  has  happened  to  trade-union  leaders,  political 
critics,  newspaper  editors,  ministers  of  state,  generals. 

I  remember  when  he  came  out  to  France  in  the  war. 
It  was  the  time  when  our  G.  H.  Q.  was  deeply  annoyed 
by  his  way  with  them.  Some  of  our  generals  expressed 
their  loathing  for  him  openly  in  their  messes.  They 
thought  his  visit  was  to  spy  out  things,  to  make  trouble. 
The  least  prejudiced  were  convinced  that  he  would  stop 
them  from  winning  the  war — though  it  was  years 
afterward  that  the  war  was  won  and  at  that  time  any 
process  of  "winning"  was  not  visible  to  impartial  ob- 
servers. The  inevitable  happened.  I  saw  it  happen, 
and  in  private  laughed.  After  a  little  while  high  officers 
were  treading  on  one  another's  spurs  to  get  a  word  with 
him,  to  listen  to  the  words  that  fell  from  him.  His  air 
of  simplicity,  his  apparent  candor,  his  sense  of  humor, 
the  keenness  and  alertness  of  his  mind  were  not  to  be 
resisted  by  them.  They  were  hke  school  children  in 
the  presence  of  an  inspired  schoolmaster. 

Many  people  have  had  the  honor  of  taking  breakfast 
with  Mr.  Lloyd  George  at  No.  lo  Downing  Street— 
(Come  into  my  parlor,  said  the  spider  to  the  fly!)  It  is 
a  most  dangerous  hour  to  those  who  wish  to  preserve  a 
detached  judgment.  When  I  had  the  honor  once  of 
being  invited  to  this  meal,  I  was  very  watchful  of  the 
little  great  man  and  his  menage,  trying  to  get  some 
insight  into  the  secret  quality  of  his  genius.  There  was 
no  ceremony  to  impress  the  stranger,  but  a  homeliness 
and  candor  far  more  impressive.     Mr.  Lloyd  George 


LEADERS  OF  THE  OLD  TRADITION 

helped  his  guests  to  toast.  Mrs.  Lloyd  George — a  nice, 
homely  woman — poured  out  the  morning  coffee.  Miss 
Megan  came  down  in  a  hurry,  said,  "Good  morning, 
Dad!"  and  attacked  her  bacon  and  eggs  with  the  joyous 
appetite  of  youth. 

"How  are  things  going  in  France?"  asked  Mrs. 
Lloyd  George,  with  a  motherly  sigh  for  all  poor  boys. 

"Yes!"  said  the  Prime  Minister.  "Dreadful  mess, 
that  last  battle,  wasn't  it.^  Haven't  heard  a  word  about 
it  from  G.  H.  Q.  First  I  heard  was  when  I  read  your 
articles."  Subtle  flattery  and  pleasing  to  a  war  cor- 
respondent. 

He  asked  straight  questions,  listened  (unlike  most 
great  men)  to  the  answers,  uttered  indiscreet  criticism 
of  high  persons,  chaffed  Miss  Megan,  passed  his  cup  for 
some  more  coffee,  groaned  over  the  horror  of  war  with 
honest  emotion,  laughed  heartily  over  a  comic  tale  of 
the  trenches,  discovered  a  point  of  fact  he  wanted  to 
know — the  reason  for  the  invitation  to  breakfast — and 
indulged  in  a  bright,  uncomplimentary  monologue  about 
generals,  war  offices  and  newspaper  editors,  until  checked 
by  Mrs.  Lloyd  George,  who  said,  "Get  on  with  your 
breakfast,  dear." 

Going  away  from  that  meal  I  had  a  glow  of  personal 
vanity.  This  man,  holding  the  fate  of  an  empire,  almost 
the  fate  of  the  world,  in  his  hands,  had  been  glad  to  have 
my  views.  He  had  listened  with  bright  understanding 
eyes  to  my  explanation  of  facts.  He  had  picked  up  a 
phrase  of  mine  and  repeated  it  to  his  wife.  Is  it  easy  to 
resist  flattery  like  that?  ...  It  is  impossible. 

That  candor  of  his  blue  eye,  that  frankness  of  speech, 
that  readiness  to  alter  his  own  opinion  in  view  of  a  new 
fact — ^were  they  just  a  camouflage  of  deep  cunning, 
artfulness  developed  into  a  natural  habit?  I  do  not 
think  so.  There  is  in  the  soul  of  Lloyd  George  still  a 
certain  simplicity,  a  boyishness,  natural  and  unfeigned. 

23 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

At  Walton  Heath,  where  he  played  golf  to  keep  him  fit 
during  the  strain  of  war,  he  used  to  walk  round  a  friend's 
garden  with  a  friend's  daughter — a  chit  of  a  schoolgirl, 
and  talk  to  her  in  a  comradely  way,  telling  her  funny 
things  that  had  happened  in  Cabinet  meetings,  ridiculing 
the  whimsical  characteristics  of  ministers  of  state,  chat- 
ting about  state  secrets  as  though  they  were  the  gossip 
of  the  village  green.  With  a  felt  hat  thrust  sideways  on 
his  shaggy  locks,  an  old  suit  amazingly  baggy  at  the 
knees,  and  a  gnarled  stick  like  a  country  squire,  he  used 
to  stroll  into  this  house,  as  I  have  seen  him,  and  discuss 
the  situation  breezily  with  a  much  closer  realization  of 
the  stark  realities  than  those  whom  optimism  blinded  to 
truth — yet  never  with  any  sign  of  weariness  or  despair. 

Once  with  Lord  Reading  and  Albert  Thomas,  the 
French  Minister  of  Labor,  he  came  to  the  war  cor- 
respondents' mess  in  France.  That  was  a  breakfast 
meal,  too,  and  he  was  exceedingly  vivacious.  I  noticed 
that  he  was  a  keen  listener  to  one  comrade  of  mine  who 
has  the  gift  of  epigrammatic  speech,  and  made  a  mental 
note  of  a  descriptive  phrase  about  the  battles  of  the 
Somme  which  afterward  he  adopted  as  his  own.  So 
did  Shakespeare  use  the  best  he  heard,  if  Bernard  Shaw 
is  right. 

One  other  time  in  the  war  I  met  Lloyd  George,  on  a 
night  of  great  honor  in  my  life,  when  Robert  Donald 
gave  a  dinner  to  me  and  invited  many  high  people  to  the 
board.  It  was  generous  of  the  Prime  Minister  to  come, 
and  he  was  gracious  and  kind.  Henry  Nevinson  was 
there,  I  remember,  an  old  friend  once,  and  for  a  time  a 
public  enemy  of  Lloyd  George.  For  Nevinson — as  I  tell 
elsevvhere  in  this  book — was  a  champion  of  the  militant 
suffragettes,  of  whom  Lloyd  George  was  the  arch  antag- 
onist, and  he  had  rebuked  and  ridiculed  Nevinson  with 
personal  warmth.  For  other  reasons  this  old  comrade 
of  mine,   fastidious  in   honor,   always   a   rebel   against 

24 


LEADERS  OF  THE  OLD  TRADITION 

authority  if  he  thought  liberty  v/ere  threatened,  disap- 
proved of  a  Prime  Minister,  once  a  rebel  of  that  kind, 
too,  who  enforced  authority  against  free  speech,  con- 
scientious objection,  peace  propagandists,  harshly  in 
time  of  war.  The  Prime  Minister  held  out  his  hand  to 
Nevinson  with  a  fine  air  of  friendliness  and  pleasure, 
and  only  for  a  second,  with  a  little  extra  warmth  of 
color  creeping  into  the  ruddiness  of  his  face,  did  Nevin- 
son hesitate  before  he  took  it.  The  Prime  Minister's 
laugh  was  heartiest  when  the  veteran  war  correspondent, 
alluding  to  my  greenness  in  my  first  adventure  of  war 
(out  in  the  Balkans),  said  that  I  did  not  know  the 
difference  then  between  a  staff  officer  and  a  fool. 

I  had  to  make  a  speech  that  night — an  ordeal  before 
a  Prime  Minister  of  England  and  such  an  orator  as  this 
one.  Yet  I  kept  my  courage  to  the  sticking  point  for 
the  sake  of  youth  that  was  being  slain  so  wastefully,  in 
such  tragic  masses.  I  wanted  to  tell  Lloyd  George  the 
things  that  happen  on  a  battlefield,  the  things  happening 
in  Flanders,  every  day,  every  night,  in  all  the  weeks  and 
months  of  days  and  nights,  so  that  he  should  think  of 
the  war  not  in  the  abstract,  not  as  a  conflict  between 
great  powers,  but  in  its  actual  drama,  as  a  shambles  of 
boys  and  a  world  of  human  torture.  I  told  him  how  a 
battlefield  looked  on  the  morning  of  battle  with  its  dead, 
its  stretcher-bearers  searching  for  hunks  of  living  flesh, 
the  "walking  wounded"  crawling  on  the  way  back, 
falling,  staggering  up  again,  dropping  again,  the  queues 
of  wounded  outside  the  casualty  clearing  stations,  the 
blind  boys,  the  men  without  faces,  the  "shell  shocks." 
It  was  not  I  that  was  making  the  speech.  It  was  the 
voice  of  the  boys  on  the  Western  Front  that  spoke 
through  my  lips  to  this  man  who  was,  to  some  extent  at 
least,  the  arbiter  of  their  fate.  So  it  seemed  to  me, 
speaking  in  a  trance-Uke  way.  General  Smuts  was  by 
my  side  and,  though  I  had  been  talking  with  him,  im- 
3  25 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

pressed  by  his  clear  judgment  and  human  sympathy,  I 
forgot  him  then,  and  all  others  at  the  table,  and  spoke 
only  to  Lloyd  George.  When  I  finished  I  was  aghast  at 
my  own  temerity,  ashamed  of  the  emotion  with  which 
I  had  spoken,  but  he  shook  my  hand  and  spoke  some 
words  which  told  me  that  he  knew  and  understood.  .  .  . 
He  understands  and  has  great  sympathy  with  all  the 
suffering  that  the  cruelty  of  life  inflicts.  It  is  because  he 
understands  so  much,  feels  so  rightly,  that  one  is  angered 
when  often  he  supports  those  who  stand  for  cruelty, 
oppose  peace  and  reconciliation,  and  defend  evil  forces. 
I  believe  still  that  in  his  instincts  Lloyd  George  is 
always  on  the  side  of  humanity  and  good  will,  though  in 
many  of  his  acts  he  compromises  with  the  spirit  of  harsh 
reaction,  makes  friends  too  readily  with  the  Mammon  of 
Unrighteousness,  sells  some  quality  of  his  soul  for  po- 
litical power,  the  safety  of  his  office,  and  the  advantage 
of  immediate  triumph. 

A  great  comrade  of  mine  in  the  war,  with  whom  I  went 
on  many  strange  adventures,  used  the  name  of  Lloyd 
George  very  much  as  Louis  XIV  is  said  to  have  done 
that  of  his  "brother"  of  England — as  an  irritant  to  the 
liver.  This  friend,  an  officer  in  the  regular  cavalry, 
typical  of  the  English  gentleman  and  officer  of  the  old 
South  African  war  time — a  good  type  (perhaps  the  best 
in  the  world  of  its  class  and  caste)  but  old-fashioned  and 
limited  in  imagination  and  knowledge — put  all  the  evils 
of  England,  and  even  the  war  itself,  upon  the  head  of 
this  little  politician.  Lloyd  George's  revolutionary 
utterances,  his  Limehouse  speech  in  which  he  outraged 
the  aristocracy  of  England  by  coarse  abuse  and  reckless 
libels,  seemed  to  this  cavalry  officer  the  direct  cause  of 
all  the  strikes  and  spirit  of  revolt  in  Great  Britain. 
His  pro-Boer  sympathies  labeled  him  forever  in  my 
friend's  mind  a  traitor.  His  friendship  with  Jews  and 
financial  crooks  involving  him  in  the  Marconi  scandal, 

26 


LEADERS  OF  THE  OLD  TRADITION 

"from  which,"  said  the  worthy  captain,  "he  only 
escaped  by  the  skin  of  his  teeth  and  the  help  of  Sir 
Edward  Carson,"  proved  the  moral  obliquity  of  the  little 
Welshman.  His  lip  service  to  God  and  Nonconformity 
sickened  my  friend  as  the  foulest  hypocrisy.  He  sus- 
pected strongly  that  he  was  ready  to  betray  Sir  Douglas 
Haig  at  any  moment,  just  as  he  had  betrayed  Asquith 
for  the  sake  of  the  premiership,  "just  as  he  would  sell 
the  soul  of  his  grandmother,"  said  the  cavalry  officer, 
"for  any  dirty  little  trick  in  the  political  game." 

I  used  to  laugh  heartily  at  these  tirades.  Indeed,  to 
brighten  a  journey  up  the  Albert-Bapaume  road  or  the 
road  to  Peronne,  I  used  to  mention  the  name  of  Lloyd 
George  a  propos  of  the  day's  news,  rewarded  instantly 
by  a  warning  of  England's  moral  downfall  under  the 
governance  of  a  man  who  bribed  the  working  classes  to 
work,  bribed  them  again  when  they  struck  work,  and 
established  the  most  inquisitorial  system  of  bureaucracy 
under  which  any  people  have  been  stifled.  .  .  .  Lloyd 
George  has  gone  a  long  way  from  the  time  when  he 
could  be  accused  of  revolutionary  and  subversive  action, 
an  enemy  of  Capital.  By  slow  degrees,  yet  very  surely, 
he  was  drawn  over  to  the  side  of  the  Tory  interest. 
More  and  more  he  surrendered  to  the  reactionary  policy, 
the  hard  materialistic  outlook  and  rigid  traditions  of 
Conservatives  like  Bonar  Law  and  A.  J.  Balfour,  Lord 
Curzon  and  Sir  Edward  Carson,  and  of  financial  im- 
periahsts  like  Lord  Beaverbrook,  by  whose  under- 
ground work  he  had  been  raised  to  his  high  place.  The 
Coalition  government,  founded  in  time  of  war  to  unite 
all  parties  in  a  national  policy,  became  an  assembly  of 
tame  politicians  whose  job  was  to  vote  solidly  for  any 
measure  favored  by  the  Prime  Minister  and  his  Con- 
servative backers — and  solidly  to  lean  their  weight 
against  any  criticism  or  rebellion  from  independent 
members.     There  was  no  more  difference  between  a 

27 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

Coalition  Liberal  and  a  Tory  than  between  two  tins  of 
canned  pork  differently  labeled.  They  were  men 
disciplined  to  obey  the  government,  to  flock  into  the 
lobbies  like  sheep  at  the  crack  of  the  government 
"whips,"  to  defend  every  government  measure  as  good 
and  holy,  to  attack  all  critics  as  traitors  to  the  country. 
Whenever  there  was  a  bye-election  the  Coalition  Liberals 
were  supported  by  the  government  machine,  and  blessed 
by  Tory  Ministers  of  State,  while  Independent  Liberals, 
the  last  of  the  Old  Guard  of  English  Hberalism  which 
had  once  been  the  glory  of  the  nation,  of  Gladstonian 
tradition,  were  crushed  by  this  unholy  alliance. 

The  Prime  Minister  was  the  architect  of  this  new 
political  system  which  has  done  much  to  deaden  the 
spirit  of  Parliament  and  to  destroy  its  influence  as  the 
tribunal  before  which  the  national  interests  were  argued 
and  resolved.  It  could  no  longer  be  regarded  as  the 
safeguard  of  British  Hberty  when  the  Cabinet  possessed 
an  autocratic  power  and  moderate  opposition  was 
stifled  by  automatic  majorities.  It  gave  the  extremists 
in  the  Labor  world  their  best  argument.  "What  is  the 
use  of  appealing  to  constitutional  government,"  they 
asked,  "when  the  House  is  packed  by  reactionary 
forces,  cleverly  organized,  unrepresentative  of  popular 
will,  and  antagonistic  to  all  Liberal  ideas?  Direct  action 
by  strikes  and  threats  of  strikes,  is  the  only  method  by 
which  the  right  of  the  working  classes  may  be  enforced." 

Lloyd  George,  as  many  other  great  men  have  done 
in  the  past,  identifies  himself  with  the  interests  of  the 
nation,  and  the  interests  of  the  nation  with  himself. 
*'  VEtat,  c'est  moi!"  he  says,  with  Louis  XV.  He  is 
perfectly  aware  that,  owing  to  his  peculiar  qualities  of 
genius,  there  is  as  yet  no  other  leader  in  England  who 
can  challenge  him  or  take  his  place.  He  is  unrivaled  in 
oratory,  in  debate,  in  quickness  of  wit,  above  all  in  the 
knowledge  which  is  the  greatest  gift  of  generalship  and 

28 


LEADERS  OF  THE  OLD  TRADITION 

governance — when  to  attack  and  when  to  retreat. 
Always  he  has  his  ear  to  the  ground,  Hstening  to  the 
distant  tramp  of  feet.  Whenever  it  comes  too  near  he 
gives  ground,  "according  to  plan,"  and  then  with  superb 
audacity  and  a  sure  touch  attacks  his  enemy  in  an  un- 
expected place.  He  retreats  with  the  greatest  grace  in 
the  world,  yielding  the  inevitable  with  a  heau  geste^  as  a 
generous  gift.  In  debate  his  success  is  largely  due  to 
that.  He  grants  so  much  of  his  opponents'  argument 
that  they  are  stupefied  by  his  candor  and  disarmed  by 
his  chivalry.  As  a  rule  he  states  their  side  of  the  case 
with  more  persuasive  oratory  than  they  could  dream  of 
doing.  He  goes  farther  than  they  would  dare.  It  is 
what  he  calls  "taking  the  wind  out  of  the  enemy's  sails." 
Then  he  breaks  through  their  line  of  battle  with  "the 
Nelson  touch"  and  destroys  their  last  resistance  with 
his  broadsides. 

This  is  what  he  most  enjoys.  It  makes  him  feel 
young  and  fresh.  His  babe-blue  eyes  glow  with  the 
light  of  battle.  It  appeals  to  that  keen  sense  of  humor 
which  is  a  large  part  of  his  power  and  a  cause  of  his 
weakness — a  double-edged  weapon.  For  it  is  his  sense 
of  humor  which  enables  him  to  preserve  his  mental 
poise  after  years  of  intense  strain  bearing  down  upon 
him  from  all  quarters.  Anxiety,  dangers,  attacks  from 
front  and  rear,  leave  him  strangely  unscathed  because 
he  has  the  gift  of  laughter,  sees  great  fun  in  it  all,  a 
merry  adventure.  The  pomposities  of  great  gentlemen 
like  Lord  Curzon,  the  preciosities  of  Mr.  Balfour,  the 
conceits  of  Winston  Churchill,  afford  him  real  amuse- 
ment, and  when  he  is  weary  of  Cabinet  discussions,  tired 
with  high  people,  overstrained  by  the  necessity  of  posing 
as  the  new  Napoleon,  he  retires  gladly  to  a  little  circle 
of  low-class  friends,  and  feels  refreshed  by  their  vul- 
garities, their  lack  of  high  morality,  their  cynical  knowl- 
edge of  life,  and  of  him.     He  can  take  his  ease  among 

29 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

them  with  nothing  to  conceal,  nothing  to  pretend.  He 
knows  their  human  frailties.  They  know  his.  They 
have  been  well  rewarded  by  him,  and  hope  for  more. 
He  likes  their  loyalty,  their  rich  jests,  their  memories  of 
old  times  when  together  they  heard  the  chimes  at  mid- 
night. .  .  .  Mr.  Lloyd  George  will  take  his  place  in  his- 
tory as  the  most  remarkable  Prime  Minister  of  England 
since  the  time  of  the  elder  Pitt.  It  is  possible  also  that 
he  will  take  his  place  in  history  as  the  man  who  by  sur- 
rendering his  ideals  at  the  time  when  the  world  was 
crying  out  for  spiritual  leadership  helped  Europe  fall 
into  moral  degradation  and  material  ruin. 

Yet  time  and  time  again  during  those  three  years  of 
history  his  old  instincts  of  idealism  have  revealed 
themselves  momentarily.  He  made  a  bid  for  peace  with 
the  Russian  people  by  which  Bolshevism  might  have 
been  defeated,  but  surrendered  to  Winston  Churchill's 
military  adventures  on  behalf  of  Kolchak,  Denikin, 
Wrangel,  and  others,  which  consolidated  the  power  of 
Trotzky,  intensified  the  Red  Terror,  and  broadened  its 
areas  of  agony.  In  dealing  with  the  problem  of  German 
reparations,  he  argued  with  the  French  government  for 
a  reasonable  policy  which  would  give  Europe  a  chance 
of  recovery  and  enable  the  German  people  to  pay  ac- 
cording to  possibility.  But  he  surrendered  to  the 
French  militarists  in  their  threat  to  occupy  the  Ruhr, 
acknowledging  as  he  did  so  that  if  this  "sanction"  were 
fulfilled  German  industry  would  "wither"  and  with 
this  withering  all  hopes  of  European  regeneration  would 
be  quite  blighted. 

He  made  fair  offers  of  conciliation  with  Ireland,  but 
frustrated  all  eflPorts  of  moderate  men  for  peace  by 
approving  the  policy  of  reprisals,  strengthening  the 
powers  of  the  counter-terror,  refusing  to  listen  to  all 
pleas  for  mercy,  yielding  all  methods  of  statesmanship  to 
the  stupidity  of  "brass-hat"  brains,  dealing  with  the 


LEADERS  OF  THE  OLD  TRADITION 

Irish  people,  of  whom  100,000  men  had  fought  by  our 
side  in  the  war,  and  whose  soul  has  been  heroic  through 
a  thousand  years  of  history,  as  though  they  were  rebel 
"niggers"  of  a  slave-driving  power.  Whatever  peace 
may  come  to  Ireland  by  the  time  this  book  is  published, 
it  will  not  be  due  to  Lloyd  George,  once  the  young 
David  who  fought  against  the  tyrant  to  liberty,  but  to 
men  who  so  loved  England  that  they  could  not  bear  the 
thought  of  her  dishonor,  as  we  were  dishonored  by  the 
madness  and  badness  of  our  acts  in  Ireland.  The 
atrocious  evil  of  Sinn  Fein,  the  ferocity  and  cruelty  of 
its  guerrilla  warfare,  were  caused  by  no  peculiar  devil  in 
the  Irish  people,  though  the  devil  took  possession  of 
the  worst  of  them,  but  by  our  long  Injustice,  the  falsity 
of  our  political  leaders,  the  irreconcilable  fanaticism  of 
men  like  Sir  Edward  Carson  and  the  light-hearted 
cynicism  of  men  like  F.  E.  Smith,  now  Lord  Birkenhead, 
Lord  Chancellor  of  England. 

/ 

VI 

In  the  great  crisis  of  English  history,  when,  in  these 
last  three  years,  our  national  life  has  been  in  danger 
of  ruin,  and  our  empire  itself  is  challenged  by  disintegra- 
tion and  decay,  we  have  had  no  good  fortune  in  leaders 
whose  wisdom  and  virtue  called  out  the  allegiance  of 
their  peoples.  Is  there  any  soul  in  England  who  believes 
in  the  wisdom  of  Winston  Churchill.?  Not  one,  I  think, 
in  all  the  land.  Wit  he  has,  a  bold  spirit  of  adventure, 
courage,  stubborn  self-conceit,  the  cool  audacity  of  a 
gambler  who  plays  for  big  stakes,  but  no  wisdom — no 
luck,  even,  except  in  getting  high  office.  It  was  aston- 
ishing in  the  war  how  unlucky  he  was.  Men  with  far 
less  ability,  poor  dunderheads  compared  with  him, 
blundered  through  to  great  success,  or  at  least  covered 
over  great  failure  and  gained  high  reward.    But  Winston 

31 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

Churchill  had  abominable  luck  which  revealed  his  error 
of  judgment  at  Antwerp.  The  evacuation  of  the  Dar- 
danelles was  a  colossal  revelation  of  failure.  The  Rus- 
sian expeditions  which  he  encouraged  and  helped  to 
organize  were  so  bad  that  no  one  dares  to  tell  the  truth 
of  what  happened.  He  has  the  instinct  of  the  gambler, 
and  by  a  curious  subconsciousness  of  mind  speaks  con- 
stantly in  terms  of  gambhng,  I  remember  when  I  met 
him  during  the  war  he  said  several  times,  as  though  it 
were  a  fixed  idea:  "This  war  is  the  greatest  gamble  in 
the  history  of  the  world.  We're  playing  for  the  biggest 
stakes."  It  did  not  seem  to  worry  him  that  we  were 
gambling  with  the  lives  of  boys — the  counters  in  his 
"kitty."  After  the  great  war  we  had  "Winston's 
little  wars,"  as  they  were  called  derisively  by  humble 
men.  Mesopotamia  was  a  gamble,  too,  costing  us 
many  million  pounds  a  year  when  in  England  the 
overtaxed  citizen  was  paying  six  shillings  out  of  every 
twenty  of  his  income  to  an  imperial  exchequer  whose 
debts  were  spelled  in  figures  beyond  the  imagination 
of  ordinary  men.  It  was  a  gamble  for  the  oil  fields 
of  the  East,  but  very  hazardous  and  costly,  and  so 
far  unproductive. 

I  remember  years  ago  waiting  in  Churchill's  study.  I 
had  gone  to  see  him  for  some  interview  and  he  kept  me 
half  an  hour,  so  that  I  had  time  to  examine  the  photo- 
graphs on  his  mantelshelf  and  desk.  There  were  several 
of  John  Churchill,  Duke  of  Marlborough,  his  illustrious 
ancestor  and  one  of  the  world's  greatest  gamblers,  ad- 
venturers, and  generals.  He  was  there  as  a  youth,  fine- 
faced,  in  full-bottomed  wig,  and  when  Winston  Churchill 
came  in  I  was  startled  by  the  likeness.  In  such  a  wig 
he  would  have  looked  like  this,  amazingly.  In  those 
days  he  was  called  "a  young  man  in  a  hurry"  and  there 
seemed  no  limit  to  the  possibilities  of  his  career.  He 
might    have    been    as    great    as    Marlborough,    as    un- 

32 


LEADERS  OF  THE  OLD  TRADITION 

scrupulous  as  he  was,  as  fortunate.  But  it  has  not  been 
so,  though  the  chance  seemed  to  be  within  his  grasp. 
Palestine,  Egypt,  Mesopotamia,  lured  him,  as  other 
men  have  been  lured  by  their  old  spell,  but  the  days  of 
empire  are  passing  because  of  the  exhaustion  of  men 
after  a  war  of  massacre,  because  the  idea  of  greater 
empire  has  died  within  us  and  given  place  to  new 
ideals.  Winston  Churchill  has  been  gambling  with  but 
a  few  "chips"  in  his  pocket,  and  the  forces  of  evolution 
and  of  fate  have  been  heavily  against  him.  He  is  not  a 
leader  of  the  new  ideals,  but  a  man  of  yesterday,  with 
to-morrow  coming  near. 

Where  are  the  leaders  of  the  new  ideals?  Are  not  all 
our  leaders  men  of  yesterday,  in  England,  France,  even 
the  United  States?  Haphazard,  I  think  of  the  leaders 
of  England.  Lord  Curzon,  so  grave  and  pompous — • 
"God's  butler,"  as  the  Oxford  undergraduates  called 
their  chancellor;  Mr.  A.  J.  Balfour,  "dear  Arthur," 
so  perfect  in  courtesy,  so  philosophical  in  argument,  so 
gracious  in  dignity  of  manner,  so  debonair,  even  now, 
with  his  silvered  hairs,  so  hard  in  old  ideas,  so  unbending 
to  new  needs  of  life,  so  intolerant  of  human  passions,  so 
cynical  of  enthusiasms  and  spiritual  fervor,  so  stubborn 
in  hostility  to  any  new  adventure  of  liberty;  Chamber- 
lain, the  counterfeit  of  a  greater  father,  able  as  a  bank 
manager,  correct  as  an  archdeacon,  cold  as  a  statue  on 
the  Thames  Embankment,  uninspired  as  the  secretary 
of  an  insurance  office,  but  honorable  and  upright.  Who 
else  is  there  that  leaps  to  one's  mind  as  one  of  the  great 
figures  of  history  in  this  astounding  period  of  the  world's 
fate?  I  can  hardly  think  of  the  names  of  those  who 
govern  England  beyond  those  I  have  named.  Hamar 
Greenwood,  the  Canadian  Jew,  notorious  and  marvelous, 
certainly  for  the  unblushing  daily  denial  of  anything 
undesirable  in  the  administration  of  Ireland;  Mr.  Shortt, 
his  predecessor;     Doctor  Addison,   the  author  of  pre- 

33 


MORE  THAT  MUST   BE  TOLD 

posterous  failures;  Sir  Alfred  Mond,  the  caricature  of  a 
caricature;  numbers  of  little  men,  insignificant  per- 
sonalities. 

Sir  Edward  Carson,  once  a  minister  of  state,  for  long 
one  of  the  powers  behind  the  throne  of  political  life, 
stands  out  above  them.  In  the  memories  of  history  he 
is  sure  of  a  high  place.  For  he  has  played  a  big  part  in 
a  big  manner — the  old  style  of  melodrama — in  the  most 
evil  character  of  recent  history.  He  has  stood  con- 
sistently for  reaction  against  all  the  influences  of  Liberal 
progress.  He  has  been  for  fanaticism  instead  of  for  con- 
ciliation. He  has  defended  cruelty  instead  of  advocating 
kindness.  Upon  his  head  more  than  upon  any  other 
man  alive  rests  the  guilt  of  all  that  has  happened  in 
Ireland.  When  Home  Rule  was  passed  by  the  British 
House  of  Commons  in  1914,  he  raised  the  banner  of 
rebellion  with  the  sign  of  the  Red  Hand  of  Ulster.  Long 
before  that  Act  was  passed  by  a  great  majority  of  Eng- 
lish Liberals  and  Irish  members,  he  carried  the  fiery 
torch  among  the  Ulster  people  and  with  the  present 
Lord  Chancellor,  then  F.  E.  Smith,  as  his  "galloper" 
and  stump  orator,  beat  up  all  the  old  prejudices  of  re- 
ligious strife,  racial  hatred,  political  passion.  Pro- 
testing his  loyalty  to  the  King  and  the  Flag  of  Union, 
he  raised,  drilled,  and  commanded  a  rebel  army  pledged 
to  resist  Home  Rule  by  force  of  arms  and  to  make  a 
mockery  of  the  Act  signed  by  George  V.  By  his  consent 
and  under  his  orders  arms  were  smuggled  into  Ulster. 
They  were  German  rifles  and  ammunition.  By  a  Solemn 
League  and  Covenant  he  engaged  the  population  of 
Ulster  by  oath  to  resist  Home  Rule  to  the  death,  and 
deliberately,  with  fiery  oratory,  and  with  every  art  of 
inflaming  passion,  he  set  about  the  work  of  organizing 
civil  war. 

It  was  only  the  Great  War  which  stopped  this  one  in 
Ireland,  for  the  time  being,  but  he  was  truly  the  author 

34 


LEADERS  OF  THE  OLD  TRADITION 

of  that  guerrilla  warfare  which  has  been  waged  by  Sinn 
Fein  against  the  forces  of  the  crown.  The  Irish  outside 
Ulster,  the  real  Irish  race,  saw  themselves  threatened 
by  the  rising  and  arming  of  the  Ulster  volunteers.  They 
knew  the  temper  and  purpose  of  these  men.  Some  of 
them  had  seen,  as  I  had  seen  in  the  back  slums  of  Bel- 
fast, murderous  assaults  by  Orangemen  upon  Catholic 
workingmen  who  were  kicked  to  death  where  they  fell 
under  unprovoked  attack.  Some  of  them  had  seen,  as  I 
had  seen,  the  march  past  of  thousands  of  young  Ulster- 
men,  in  military  formation,  well  set  up  and  well  drilled, 
grim,  resolute,  spoiling  for  a  fight.  Some  of  them  heard, 
as  I  heard.  Sir  Edward  Carson's  speeches  promising  them 
"victory."  The  Irish  of  the  south  and  west  waited  for 
the  demobilization  of  these  men  by  the  British  govern- 
ment. The  news  that  came  to  them  was  the  resignation 
of  British  officers  in  the  Curragh  camp,  who  refused  to 
obey  the  orders  of  the  War  Minister  to  force  their  sur- 
render of  arms  in  Ulster.  They  began  to  raise  their  own 
volunteers,  drilled  them,  but  could  not  arm  them. 
Then  the  other  war  happened.  .  .  . 

When  it  happened  it  seemed  to  promise  for  a  time 
reconciliation  in  Ireland  in  the  face  of  a  great  and 
common  danger.  Thousands  of  Irishmen  volunteered 
for  service  on  behalf  of  the  world's  liberty,  and  the 
Irish  people  of  the  old  stock  believed  that  at  last  their 
country  would  have  the  right  to  rule  herself  according 
to  the  watchwords  of  the  war,  "the  self-determination 
of  peoples,"  "the  right  of  the  little  nations,"  "the 
brotherhood  of  man."  They  were  treated  stupidly, 
tactlessly  by  the  English  War  Office.  Their  ardor  cooled, 
and  then  something  happened  which  seemed  an  insult 
to  every  Irishman  outside  Ulster.  It  was  an  insult 
when  Sir  Edward  Carson,  their  avowed  enemy,  the 
man  who  had  wrecked  Home  Rule  and  raised  a  rebel 
army    against    them,   was    made    a    minister    of    state. 

35 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

How  could  they  believe  in  the  honesty  or  good  will  of 
the  British  government  with  that  man  in  the  Council 
Chamber?  So  step  by  step  from  exasperation  to  rebel- 
lion, punished  ruthlessly,  though  Carson  went  scot 
free,  from  rebellion  to  general  insurrection,  to  assassina- 
tion, to  guerrilla  warfare,  the  horror  of  Ireland  went  on, 
and  all  through  its  agony  of  murder  and  arson,  govern- 
ment reprisals  and  executions,  Carson  stood  behind 
Lloyd  George,  a  sinister  figure,  and  no  word  did  he 
speak  for  peace,  though  he  is  Irish,  born  of  an  Irish- 
woman, no  word  of  his  was  for  the  ending  of  bloodshed 
by  a  truce  of  God,  but  only  irreconcilable  words,  dividing 
Ulster  from  the  rest  of  Ireland,  though  at  last  he  had 
yielded  to  a  separate  Parliament. 

"Do  I  look  like  a  criminal?"  asked  Sir  Edward  Carson 
once,  in  bland  surprise  at  being  called  one.  As  G.  K. 
Chesterton  said  in  answer  to  this  question:  "There  is 
only  one  answer  possible.  You  do!"  Many  times  in 
those  days  before  the  war,  when  he  was  playing  the 
Napoleon  of  the  boys  of  Belfast,  I  used  to  study  his 
face,  so  long  and  lean,  with  dark  lines  under  his  sunken 
eyes,  and  a  strange,  cynical  sneer  on  his  lips.  A  power- 
ful face,  but  without  beauty  in  it,  or  any  touch  of  kind- 
ness or  spiritual  fire  or  human  warmth,  a  haunted 
face,  I  thought  it,  and  guessed  it  might  be  haunted  by 
the  memories  of  all  the  filth  and  corruption  and  greed 
and  cruelty  which  lawyers  pass  on  their  way  in  the 
criminal  courts.  Sir  Edward  Carson  himself  is  a  man 
of  honor,  according  to  the  average  code.  He  has  the 
manner  of  a  great  gentleman.  In  private  life  he  is,  I  am 
told,  genial  and  good-natured.  Toward  the  end  of  his 
fight  against  Irish  Home  Rule  he  was,  I  think,  even  a 
little  conscience-stricken,  and  did  at  least  and  at  last 
remove  his  own  personality  from  the  arena  of  strife. 
But  he  stands  pilloried  for  all  time  as  a  raker-up  of  old 
hatreds,  old  fanaticisms,  old  vendettas,  old  tyrannies 

36 


LEADERS  OF  THE  OLD  TRADITION 

— the   Man   with   the   Muck    Rake,    prodding   up   the 
lower  passions  of  ignorant  and  brutal  men. 


VII 

So,  three  years  after  war,  was  Great  Britain  governed 
by  men  of  the  old  ideas. 

In  France  it  was  the  same,  though  their  leaders  were 
utterly  different  in  type  and  in  temperament. 

Clemenceau  has  passed  from  the  scene,  though  the 
acts  of  his  brain  remain  as  a  heritage  to  France.  "The 
Tiger,"  he  was  called  by  his  worshipers,  remembering 
the  ferocity  of  his  temper,  the  swift  strength  of  his  intel- 
lectual claws,  when  he  was  roused  to  action  in  youth  and 
the  prime  of  life.  I  used  to  see  him  now  and  then  in 
time  of  war  when  he  looked  more  like  a  walrus  than  a 
tiger,  a  poor  old  walrus  in  a  traveling  circus.  That  was 
when  he  used  to  visit  the  war  zone,  to  talk  with  the 
generals,  to  see  the  troops,  to  get  a  glimpse  of  that  war 
machine  which  he  helped  to  create  and  to  control — ■ 
perhaps  to  find  death,  as  some  French  officers  whis- 
pered to  me,  when  victory  seemed  impossible  and  de- 
feat very  near.  I  met  him  several  times  as  he  sat  back 
in  a  closed  military  car  by  the  side  of  a  French  staff 
officer,  looking  old  and  worn  and  sad — nothing  of  "The 
Tiger."  He  went  into  dangerous  places  under  fire  and 
there  seemed  no  purpose  in  his  being  there.  But  I  think 
his  purpose  was  to  inflame  his  own  heart  against  the 
enemy,  to  get  new  stores  and  inspiration  of  hate.  That 
was  the  passion  in  him;  and  all  the  strength  of  his  old 
man's  soul,  remembering  the  humiliation  of  1870,  seeing 
again  the  trail  of  the  beast  through  his  beloved  country, 
was  to  live  long  enough  to  see  Germany  smashed  and 
ground  to  dust. 

He  had  his  wish,  and  did  a  good  deal  of  the  grinding, 
at  the  Peace  Conference  in  Paris.     Keynes's  portrait  of 

37 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

him  will  live  in  history,  that  little  old  man  wearing  gray 
gloves,  which  he  never  took  off,  shutting  his  eyes  during 
speeches  and  interpretations  which  did  not  affect  the 
essential  purpose  of  his  mind,  which  was  the  destruction 
of  Germany  and  the  advantage  of  France,  then  waking 
to  instant  activity  of  brain  whenever  those  interests 
were  involved.  His  outlook  upon  life  seemed  to  be 
limited  to  the  instant  proof  of  French  victory,  in  the 
power  to  extort  crushing  indemnities  from  the  beaten 
enemy,  to  inflict  the  utmost  severity  of  punishment, 
which  truly  as  a  people  they  deserved.  He  had  no  pa- 
tience with  anyone  who  spoke  of  the  perils  of  future 
war,  no  tolerance  with  arithmeticians  who  tried  to  point 
out  that  Germany  could  not  pay  all  the  costs  of  all  the 
nations  after  her  own  financial  ruin,  no  ear  to  give  to 
others  like  President  Wilson  who  proposed  the  ideals 
of  a  new  society  of  nations  by  which  the  peoples  of 
Europe  should  be  relieved  of  military  burdens  and  safe- 
guarded by  common  interests.  He  mocked  at  all  that 
with  a  witty  cynicism,  sometimes  rather  blasphemous, 
as  when  he  said  that  Wilson  imagined  himself  to  be 
Jesus  Christ.  It  was  he  who  invented  the  phrase  in  the 
early  days  of  the  war  that  "the  English  would  die  to  the 
last  Frenchman,"  though  he  made  amends  by  later 
enthusiasm  for  the  valor  and  effort  of  the  English  people. 
He  had  the  gift  of  making  a  hon  mot  on  any  subject  to 
which  his  interest  could  be  awakened,  but  all  his  best 
witticisms  had  a  touch  of  cruelt}^  without  which,  indeed, 
wit  becomes  humor.  The  old  man  was  a  great  French- 
man, a  great  patriot  of  the  old  tradition.  Without  his 
spirit,  his  passion,  his  obstinacy,  his  courage,  France 
would  have  been  visibly  weaker  in  her  terrible  ordeal. 
But  his  narrow  vision  could  not  envisage  the  new  ideals 
for  which  so  many  men  had  fought  and  died — the  de- 
struction of  militarism,  not  only  in  Germany,  but  in 
France,   a   closer   comradeship   in  the  democracies   of 

38 


LEADERS  OF  THE  OLD  TRADITION 

Europe,  an  international  tribunal  before  which  the  claims 
of  peoples  would  be  brought,  as  a  better  way  of  argument 
than  national  massacre.  Clemenceau  was  one  of  those 
who  turned  the  world  back  to  cynicism  and  national 
selfishness.  It  might  have  been  better  for  the  world  if  he 
had  found  death  at  the  front  in  one  of  his  expeditions. 
Another  mind  in  France  intrenched,  after  the  armis- 
tice, in  the  spirit  of  the  past,  defying  the  hope  of  the 
future,  was  that  of  Poincare,  the  war-time  President, 
the  later  critic  of  England.  In  war  time  he  was  a  nonen- 
tity, ridiculed  in  the  revues^  the  butt  of  Gallic  wit,  which 
never  forgot  his  secret  retreat  from  Paris  when  the 
enemy  was  so  close  to  the  gates  in  the  beginning  of  the 
evil  days.  They  used  to  dress  up  comic  figures  in  a 
black  uniform  with  a  chauffeur's  cap,  and  address  them 
as  "M.  le  President  de  Bordeaux,"  and  in  such  a  uni- 
form I  saw  him  visiting  his  troops  and  ours,  a  tall  man, 
with  a  plump  waxen  face,  expressionless  and,  I  thought, 
merely  stupid.  But  after  the  war  and  his  Presidency, 
he  developed  a  gift  for  journalism,  and  his  articles  had 
a  vicious  appeal  to  the  French  public  because  he  was 
venomous  in  his  criticism  of  the  government  which  did 
not  make  Germany  "pay" — pay  all  those  fantastic 
billions  of  gold  marks  which  the  French  in  their  simplicity 
believed  were  hidden  in  the  German  treasury.  It  was 
Poincare  who  inflamed  French  suspicion  against  Eng- 
land, accused  us  of  treachery  to  French  claims  in 
Syria,  and  of  low  commercial  interests  preventing 
France  from  reaping  the  fruits  of  victory.  In  all  the 
conferences  that  assembled  to  carry  out  the  Treaty  of 
Versailles,  England's  influence  was  depicted  by  him  as 
unfriendly  to  French  interests,  hostile  to  French  policy. 
He  reawakened  the  old  tradition  of  "perfide  Albion" 
at  a  time  when  every  little  clerk  in  Paris  believed  that 
English  artfulness  accounted  for  the  fall  in  the  value  of 
the  franc,  and  French  peasants  (forgetful  too  quickly  of 

39 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

the  young  bodies  of  English  boys  that  lie  in  their  soil  as 
a  pledge  of  friendship — six  hundred  thousand  of  them!) 
said,  as  some  of  them  said  to  me,  ''Nous  avons  gagne  la 
guerrey  mats  VAngleterre  va  nous  manger'"  ("We  won 
the  war,  but  England  will  devour  us").  Alas!  Alas!  It 
was  not  good  work  by  M.  Poincare  in  regard  to  England. 
It  was  worse  work  for  Europe.  Because  his  advocacy  of 
an  impossible  sum  to  be  paid  by  Germany  delayed  the 
payment  of  the  possible  sum  which  could  have  been 
exacted  in  punishment  of  her  crime  against  the  world. 
It  delayed  the  recovery  of  Europe,  and  perhaps  pre- 
vented it  for  all  time,  unless  reason  prevails  very  soon. 

"Youth,"  said  Herbert  Hoover,  in  an  interview  I  had 
with  him,  and  which  I  have  chronicled  elsewhere,  "is 
busy  re-electing  its  old  men.  If  Briand  goes,  he  will  be 
followed  by  Poincare  into  deeper  reaction." 

Briand  became  Prime  Minister  of  France,  pursuing 
a  policy  which  was  to  obtain  the  military  domination  of 
the  Continent  over  the  ruin  of  German  militarism. 

It  is  strange  to  find  Aristide  Briand  in  that  role,  as 
it  is  to  find  Lloyd  George  the  leader  of  the  Conservative 
party;  and,  indeed,  the  careers  of  these  two  men  who 
for  a  time  have  represented  the  reactionary  policy  of  the 
Imperialists  in  France  and  England  are  strangely  similar 
in  every  way. 

Like  Lloyd  George,  Aristide  Briand  was  born  of 
humble  parents  who  stinted  and  scraped  to  make  their 
boy  a  lawyer,  and  like  Lloyd  George  again,  the  young 
Briand  was  an  ardent  democrat  of  advanced  and  revolu- 
tionary ideals.  His  "home  town,"  as  the  Americans 
say,  was  Nantes  in  Brittany,  and  here,  after  his  legal 
studies  in  Paris,  he  lounged  about  in  cafes  and  wine 
taverns,  talking  politics  to  the  local  demagogues,  and 
waiting  for  briefs  which  did  not  come.  Suddenly  he 
leaped  into  fame  for  his  defense  in  a  cause  celebre  which 
he  made  for  himself. 

40 


LEADERS  OF  THE  OLD  TRADITION 

It  was  in  this  way,  as  the  story  has  been  told  to  me. 
A  peasant  murdered  an  agent  de  police  in  a  particularly 
brutal  manner.  To  him,  as  he  sat  in  his  cell,  went  young 
Aristide  and  asked  permission  to  act  as  counsel  for  the 
defense. 

"There  is  no  defense,  m'sieu,"  said  the  peasant, 
already  prepared  for  the  guillotine. 

But  when  the  case  was  called,  Briand  stood  up  and 
said,  "I  will  defend  the  prisoner."  He  called  no  wit- 
nesses, for  those  of  the  prosecution  told  the  plain,  brutal 
truth.  But  presently  he  began  his  speech  for  the  de- 
fense. He  exalted  the  poor  besotted  man  into  the  sub- 
lime peasant  type  of  France,  and  the  agent  de  police 
into  the  representative  of  the  "brutal  tyranny"  of  the 
French  government.  With  wonderful  oratory  he  de- 
scribed the  life,  the  ignorance,  the  hard  unending  labor, 
the  very  soul  of  peasant  life  in  France,  as  Guy  de  Mau- 
passant revealed  it,  as  Zola  made  it  terrible  in  realism. 
The  papers  reported  the  speech,  which  lasted  many 
hours,  and  went  on  from  one  day  to  another.  France 
rocked  with  excitement.  In  the  courthouse  the  jury 
were  moved  to  tears.  The  peasant  was  acquitted, 
"without  a  stain  on  his  character,"  and  young  Aristide 
Briand  was  embraced  by  his  friends.  Nantes  was  not 
big  enough  for  him.  He  went  to  Paris  with  a  few  shirts 
in  his  bag.  He  called  on  Jean  Jaures,  the  Socialist 
leader,  then  editing  Ullumanite^  and  sent  up  his  card. 

"Are  you  that  young  lawyer  who  defended  the 
peasant  at  Nantes?"  asked  Jaures. 

Briand  smiled  and  bowed. 

Jaures  embraced  him. 

"What  can  I  do  for  you,  mon  vieux?" 

"Give  me  three  hundred  francs  a  month  and  a  seat 
in  your  office,"  said  Aristide  Briand. 

He  became  a  journalist.  He  wrote  scathing  articles 
against  the  government.  He  entered  politics  and  made 
4  41 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

inflammatory  speeches  in  the  country  on  behalf  of  labor. 
The  government  began  to  take  notice  of  him — began 
to  be  afraid  of  him.  With  Jean  Jaures  he  helped  to 
organize  and  strengthen  the  Confederation  Generale  du 
Travail,  and  worked  out  a  plan  for  a  general  strike 
which  would  paralyze  the  government  and  deliver 
France  into  the  hands  of  the  syndicates  or  trade  unions. 
Then  the  government  offered  him  office.  .  .  . 

When  I  met  Aristide  Briand  before  the  war  he  was  a 
Minister  of  France,  hated  as  a  renegade  and  traitor  by 
Jean  Jaures,  Gustave  Herve,  and  all  the  leaders  of  labor. 
He  had  forged  the  weapon  of  the  general  strike,  and  left 
it  in  their  hands.  It  was  they  who  drew  the  sword  to 
strike  him  down. 

The  general  strike  was  declared,  and  all  France  was 
paralyzed.  Not  a  train  "marched,"  as  they  say.  Not 
a  wheel  turned.  Paris  was  cut  off  from  supplies,  in 
danger  of  starvation.  At  night  it  was  plunged  in  dark- 
ness, and  I  remember  the  gangs  of  students  trooping 
down  from  the  Quartier  Latin  to  the  boulevards  on  the 
right  bank,  with  lanterns  and  bits  of  candle,  singing 
lugubrious  dirges  with  the  enjoyment  of  youth  in  any 
kind  of  drama.  But  the  government  of  France,  all  law 
and  order,  were  threatened  by  general  revolution.  Then 
Briand  showed  the  courage  in  him.  He  answered  the 
challenge  of  the  general  strike  by  calling  all  men  of 
several  classes  to  the  colors.  That  meant  all  the  strikers. 
It  was  penalty  of  death  if  they  disobeyed  orders.  Would 
they  dare  disobey.''  That  was  the  question  upon  which 
Briand  risked  not  only  his  own  life,  but  the  life  of  France. 
History  tells  that  they  obeyed — the  strongest  instinct 
in  the  Frenchman's  heart,  loyalty  to  the  flag,  immediate 
response  to  military  tradition. 

I  saw  Briand  at  that  time  face  to  face,  in  one  of  the 
most  interesting  interviews  I  have  had  in  my  life.  It 
was  in  a  room  furnished  in  the  style  of  Louis  XV,  ele- 

42 


LEADERS  OF  THE  OLD  TRADITION 

gant  with  its  long  mirrors  and  gilded  chairs,  and  I  stood 
by  the  side  of  a  writing  table  where  once  Napoleon 
Bonaparte  sat  as  Emperor  of  the  French.  I  chatted  to 
one  of  the  secretaries,  and  there  were  others  in  the 
room.  Presently  the  door  opened,  and  a  tall,  heavy- 
shouldered  man  with  a  shock  of  black  hair  and  a  pale 
face  with  somber  eyes  stood  staring  at  me. 

"Monsieur  Briand!"  whispered  the  secretary,  hur- 
riedly, because  I  stared  back,  not  realizing  that  this  was 
the  man,  but  strangely  held  by  those  dark  eyes. 

He  talked  in  a  friendly  way,  explained  the  gravity  of 
the  situation  in  France,  the  need  of  strong  action  to  re- 
store the  authority  of  government,  his  faith  in  the  loyalty 
of  the  French  people.  It  was  not  so  much  what  he  said 
that  impressed  me  then,  and  now,  but  the  personality 
of  the  man,  the  look  of  intense  fire  within  him,  a  kind 
of  mysticism  or  spiritual  exaltation  i  the  depths  of  that 
dark  gaze  of  his.  He  was  more  typical,  I  thought,  of  a 
revolutionary  leader  than  of  French  bureaucracy. 

During  the  war  he  bided  his  time,  took  no  great  share 
in  national  events.  There  were  many  who  thought  he 
would  be  the  Prime  Minister  of  a  liberal  France,  looking 
beyond  the  immediate  fruits  of  victory  to  a  new  pact  of 
peace  in  Europe  between  the  democracies  of  many  coun- 
tries, rising  to  the  ideal  of  a  League  of  Nations.  In- 
stead, he  demanded  the  advance  into  the  Ruhr  which 
might  have  been  a  mortal  wound  to  white  civilization 
in  Europe  by  insuring  a  war  of  the  future  in  which  the 
last  of  our  youth  would  perish.  For  that  policy  could 
only  be  maintained  as  long  as  France  held  the  power 
of  the  sword,  and  one  day  that  will  weaken. 

VIII 

I  write  these  things  not  in  blame;   not  even  in  cirti- 
cism  of  these  leaders  of  the  old  tradition  in  Europe. 

43 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

By  all  the  probabilities  of  psychological  law  not  a  man 
who  reads  this  book  of  mine  would  have  done  otherwise 
than  what  he  did,  or  would  have  been  nobler,  wiser  than 
any  of  them.  They  did  their  best  to  the  height  of  their 
quality  and  character,  to  the  limit  of  their  national 
vision. 

Looking  at  the  settlement  of  Europe  after  the  war, 
and  the  terms  of  peace,  in  the  Hght  of  old  precedents, 
with  reference  to  what  was  done  after  other  wars  and 
other  victories,  and  with  no  reaching  out  to  new  ideals, 
they  fulfilled  their  duty  loyally,  each  man,  to  the  imme- 
diate interests  of  his  own  country,  as  they  seemed  to 
him,  each  man  striving  for  what  gain  his  nation  might 
get.  One  cannot  blame  them  because  as  leaders  they 
rose  no  higher  than  the  ethical  average  of  political 
morality.  One  cannot  criticize  them  because  they  were 
little  statesmen  and  not  great  philosophers — the  poineers 
of  a  new  world.  One  only  laments  that  in  this  time  of 
enormous  crisis  in  the  world's  history  there  appeared 
no  men  or  man  among  us  with  a  genius  great  enough  to 
call  humanity  to  a  new  advance  upon  the  road  of  social 
progress,  to  call  upon  all  that  surging  of  emotion  and 
ideahsm  which  was  at  work  in  the  hearts  of  peoples 
because  of  the  agony  they  had  suffered  and  their  dreadful 
disgust  at  the  thing  that  had  happened. 

The  failure  of  the  leaders  of  the  old  tradition  was  due 
to  their  utter  inability  to  realize  that  the  war  which 
had  ended  and  the  victory  gained  were  unhke  all  others 
in  history. 

They  did  not  understand,  being  poor  men  at  arith- 
metic, that  most  of  the  accumulated  wealth  of  Euro- 
pean civilization  had  been  destroyed  in  those  four  and 
a  half  years,  leading  to  such  exhaustion  among  victors 
as  well  as  vanquished  that  the  industrial  Ufe  of  Europe 
was  threatened  with  decay  and  death. 

They  did  not  know  that  by  the  intricate  and  deHcate 

44 


LEADERS  OF  THE  OLD  TRADITION 

machinery  of  modern  industrial  civilization  depending 
upon  a  liberal  interchange  of  credits,  raw  material,  ex- 
ports, imports,  and  all  activities  of  working  folk,  the 
ruin  of  one  great  people  must  of  necessity  injure  the 
commerce  of  all  surrounding  countries  and  lower  the 
average  of  wealth,  the  normal  standard  of  life,  in  every 
other  nation. 

Their  imagination  was  not  educated  to  the  power  of 
gauging  the  effect  of  the  enormous  loss  of  man  power 
and  of  spiritual  strength,  upon  the  work  in  fields  and 
factories  of  all  peoples  who  had  been  stricken  in  the 
conflict,  so  that  for  years  their  output  would  be  de- 
creased and  their  markets  damaged,  with  the  inevitable 
result  of  widespread  unemployment  and  increasing 
poverty. 

They  believed,  in  their  simplicity,  that,  despite  the 
hideous  calamity  of  Russia,  once  the  granary  of  Europe, 
and  a  great  market,  notwithstanding  the  sentence  of 
death  they  proposed  to  pass  on  Austria,  and  the  col- 
lapse of  a  great  part  of  central  Europe,  they  could 
avoid  their  own  bankruptcy  and  revive  their  own 
prosperity,  by  getting  all  the  costs  of  war  from  Germany. 
Some  of  their  own  economic  advisers  warned  them  that 
Germany  was  also  ruined,  and  that  only  by  future  indus- 
try spread  over  innumerable  years  could  she  ever  pay 
for  the  actual  damage  done,  and  that  even  then,  if  she 
paid  back  by  an  enormous  output  of  manufactured 
articles  produced  by  the  sweated  labor  of  a  slave  popu- 
lation, the  whole  balance  of  trade  in  the  world  would 
be  upset  and  the  industry  of  England,  France,  and  many 
countries  would  be  undermined.  At  the  same  time  that 
they  wanted  to  make  Germany  pay  all  the  costs  of  all 
the  victories,  which  she  could  only  hope  to  do  by  an 
enormous  vitality  of  industry,  fatal  to  the  competition 
of  other  countries,  they  wanted  to  keep  her  so  damaged 
and  depressed  that  she  could  not  rise  again  as  a  menace 

45 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

to  her  enemies.  The  problem  was  stated  by  an  American 
humorist  in  the  form  of  a  question,  **How  can  you  keep 
a  mule  so  weak  that  it  cannot  kick  you  and  so  strong  that 
it  can  pull  the  plow?"     I  have  not  found  an  answer. 

Apart  altogether  from  the  economic  condition  of 
Europe,  so  desperate  that  it  needed  the  wisest  doctoring 
of  men  regarding  its  disease,  not  passionately,  but  with 
scientific  gravity,  with  the  knowledge  that  all  European 
countries  are  members  of  one  body,  in  which  the  disease 
of  a  vital  organ  means  a  spreading  poison  throughout 
the  system — the  spiritual  results  of  the  war  were  entirely 
ignored  by  the  leaders  of  the  old  tradition.  They  acted 
as  though  there  had  been  no  change  in  the  minds  of  men 
and  women  during  that  conflict,  whereas  the  psychology 
of  peoples  had  undergone  enormous  changes. 

The  peoples  had  seen  the  meaning  of  modern  war  in 
which  the  civilian  was  as  much  a  part  of  its  destructive 
activity  as  the  soldier  himself,  in  which  all  humanity 
was  overwhelmed  by  monstrous  engines  of  destruction. 
The  victor  peoples  did  not  desire  vengeance  so  much  as 
security  from  future  war.  The  vanquished,  after  having 
spilled  torrents  of  the  blood  of  youth  in  vain,  were  ready, 
for  a  little  while  at  least,  to  accept  all  the  penalties  of 
defeat,  if  they  were  but  given  the  hope  of  regeneration. 
Long  before  the  end  of  the  war  the  German  peasants 
and  artisans  had  abandoned  the  ideals  of  militarism  to 
which  they  had  rallied  in  the  early  days.  They  called 
the  war  "The  Great  Swindle,"  as  I  read  in  hundreds  of 
letters  captured  from  their  dugouts.  On  the  Russian 
Front  they  were  infected  with  the  pacifist  philosophy  of 
the  Soviets  before  it  became  the  bloody  terror  of  the 
Bolsheviks.  On  the  Western  Front  they  acclaimed  the 
Fourteen  Points  of  President  Wilson.  Something  might 
have  been  made  out  of  that  new  psychology  by  new 
leaders  who  did  not  assume  that  the  psychology  of  the 
peoples  was  the  same  in  1919  as  in  1914. 

46 


LEADERS  OF  THE  OLD  TRADITION 

In  Germany  the  leaders  of  the  old  tradition  also  be- 
trayed the  new  hopes.  The  German  people,  by  the  stupor 
of  defeat,  an  inherited  sense  of  obedience  to  their  ruling 
caste,  and  a  national  hatred  of  revolutionary  violence, 
failed  to  overthrow  the  caste  which  had  led  them  to 
disaster.  The  Junkers  remained  in  their  strongholds 
and  not  one  of  them  was  hanged  up  to  his  gatepost. 
The  old  bureaucracy  of  the  Empire  remained  as  the  bu- 
reaucracy of  the  Republic.  Noske,  Scheidemann, 
Ebert,  were  no  more  democratic  in  spirit  than  Beth- 
mann-Hollweg  or  Doctor  Solf.  Hindenburg  and  Luden- 
dorff  still  remained  heroic  figures  in  the  imagination  of 
men  who  remembered  that  those  names  had  been  linked 
with  great  victories  on  many  fronts  where  the  German 
race  had  fulfilled  its  pride.  The  very  depths  of  their 
defeat,  the  hatred  of  all  the  world  to  them,  caused  reac- 
tion in  the  mind  of  the  German  populace,  who  had 
cursed  them  as  tyrants  when  the  war  was  on,  and  now 
softened  to  them,  swung  back  to  them  in  admiration, 
as  heroes  of  the  time  before  the  great  humiliation.  The 
German  people,  immediately  after  their  defeat,  might 
have  flung  off  their  old  castes  and  tyrannies  with  a  great 
cry  of  liberation,  and  asked  for  the  generosity  of  the 
world's  democracy.  I  believe  they  were  for  a  time  ready 
to  do  so,  if  any  great  leader  had  been  with  them  to 
help.  I  believe  they  are  ready  even  now,  if  any  leader 
in  the  world  would  help  them.  But  instead,  they 
allowed  themselves  to  be  led  by  the  old,  crafty,  auto- 
cratic minds  of  the  Prussian  tradition,  whose  sole  idea 
of  patriotism  was  to  shirk  honest  payment  on  any  basis 
of  justice  and  to  scorn  repentance  for  great  crimes. 
Their  sole  idea  of  statecraft  was  to  bluster  and  bully 
before  the  victor  nations  and  their  own  people,  and  their 
one  hope  of  escape  from  the  consequences  of  defeat  was 
to  divide  the  Allies  by  intrigue,  and  to  recapture  their 
own   power  by  economic  forces  created   by  the  slave 

47 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

industry  of  their  half-starved  workers.  The  Supreme 
Council  of  the  Allies,  and  the  chauvinists  of  the  Allied 
nations,  played  into  the  hands  of  the  German  leaders 
of  the  old  tradition.  They  declined  to  follow  Wilson's 
lead  of  giving  German  democracy  a  chance,  on  condition 
that  German  Junkerdom  should  be  destroyed. 

By  the  many  injustices  of  the  Peace  Treaty  which  put 
large  Teutonic  populations  under  the  domination  of 
Poles,  Italians,  and  Czechs,  killed  the  economic  life  of 
Austria,  and  imposed  burdens  upon  the  working  people 
of  Germany  which  seemed  to  them  beyond  human  toler- 
ance, the  Allies  hardened  the  temper  of  those  people 
and  stifled  their  hope  of  deliverance  from  their  own  old 
tyrannies.  They  were  made  the  pariah  people  of  the 
earth.  No  nation  would  receive  them.  No  enemy 
would  forgive  them.  No  hope  would  be  given  to  them. 
It  is  no  wonder  that  gradually  they  harked  back  to  their 
old  national  sentiment  and,  being  denied  a  new  inter- 
national ideal,  turned  to  the  old  caste  again,  which  at 
least  had  defended  the  old  nationalism.  They  intrenched 
themselves  in  hate  against  hate,  abandoned  thoughts  of 
a  new  freedom  for  the  hope  of  a  new  vengeance. 

I  am  not  one  of  those  who  minimize  the  guilt  of  Ger- 
many in  the  war.  I  remember  great  brutalities,  abom- 
inable wickedness.  Nor  do  I  ignore  the  claims  of  justice 
for  due  punishment  of  crimes,  and  the  absolute  right  of 
France  to  the  reconstruction  of  her  devastated  coun- 
try and  all  the  ruins  of  her  state.  But  I  believe  that  if 
the  leaders  of  the  old  tradition  had  been  greater  in 
leadership  and  had  called  all  people  to  a  new  philosophy 
of  international  life  for  the  sake  of  future  peace  and 
the  common  weal  of  Europe,  the  German  people  would 
have  paid  more  willingly,  according  to  their  power,  and 
would  have  labored  with  all  their  might  of  industry  to 
build  up  the  ruins  they  had  caused.  Because  they  and 
their  fellow  workers  in  all  countries  would  have  been 

48 


LEADERS  OF  THE  OLD  TRADITION 

inspired  with  enthusiasm  for  the  healing  of  wounds,  so 
that  free  peoples,  cured  of  the  old  disease  of  war,  might 
march  joyfully  to  new  conquests  in  peace.  There  was  a 
chance  of  that,  and  I  am  not  alone  in  thinking  so.  All 
the  thinking  men  and  women  I  meet  in  many  parts  of 
the  world  believe  so  too — realists  like  Hoover,  idealists 
like  Robert  Cecil,  humanists  like  Anatole  France  and 
H.  G.  Wells.  But  the  leaders  of  the  old  tradition  would 
not  have  it  so. 


II 

roEALS    OF   THE    HUMANISTS 


TN  this  world  of  cynical  old  people  who  stare  forward 
^  to  the  future  with  a  melancholy  which  is  masked  by 
an  ironical  contempt  for  human  nature — has  it  not 
proved  itself  incapable  of  wisdom  or  of  any  sane  scheme 
of  progress  ? — and  who  have  a  secret  or  avowed  convic- 
tion that  Europe  is  doomed  by  the  fatal  consequences 
of  recent  history,  there  are  still  numbers  of  men  and 
women,  in  every  country,  with  an  ardent  faith  in  the 
possibility  of  building  a  nobler  system  of  life  than  that 
which  existed  before  the  ruin  into  which  war  plunged 
the  European  peoples. 

These  ideaHsts  are  brave  folk!  To  their  opponents  the 
cynics,  they  seem  ridiculous,  though  charming — dear, 
unpractical  creatures  looking  at  life  through  a  mirage  of 
sentiment,  ignoring  plain  and  frightful  facts,  trying  to 
twist  human  nature  to  standards  of  conduct  which 
mankind  is  totally  incapable  of  adopting,  fighting,  with 
pretty  or  futile  phrase,  against  the  monstrous  powers  of 
evolution,  racial  pressures,  physical  distress,  primitive 
and  ineradicable  instincts  of  greed,  cruelty,  and  passion 
which  belong  to  the  human  animal. 

Certainly  the  history  of  these  recent  years  seems  to 
be  a  death  blow  to  the  idealists,  and  it  is  surprising  to 
find  some  of  them  still  alive — some  of  the  old  guard — 
scarred  and  wounded  in  their  souls — but  still  valiant, 
undeterred,  ardent.    Remember  what  they  aimed  at  and 

50 


IDEALS  OF  THE  HUMANISTS 

how  tremendously  they  failed,  as  they  knew  they  had 
failed,  on  that  day  of  August,  1914,  when  the  greal 
armies  moved  and  Armageddon  came. 

Take  a  man  like  Jean  Jaures,  the  leader  of  the  French 
Socialists,  one  of  the  old  guard  who  fell  in  the  fight.  He 
was  really  a  sentimentalist,  though  he  roared  hke  a  lion. 
With  a  gift  of  violent  oratory  at  his  command  when- 
ever he  wished  to  stir  the  emotion  of  mobs,  as  I  saw  him 
stir  them  in  the  old  days  of  Paris,  intolerant  and  abusive 
of  a  religion  which  seemed  to  him  the  protector  and  ally 
of  the  evil  powers  of  military  force  and  class  privilege 
whom  he  was  fighting,  he  had  a  philosophy  and  a  faith 
which,  in  its  simple  motives,  in  spite  of  ironical  skepti- 
cism, was  really  Christian  in  its  idealism.  He  believed, 
beneath  all  the  superficial  irony  of  French  wit  and  the 
stark  realism  of  French  intelligence,  that  human  nature 
in  the  mass  is  capable  of  "salvation"  and  that  its  con- 
science is  divine  in  essence,  ready  to  choose  the  way  of 
righteousness,  rather  than  of  animalism,  if  liberated 
from  ignorance  and  filth  and  from  the  false  spells  put 
upon  it  by  corrupt  rulers.  He  believed — and  it  was  a 
wonderful  faith  for  a  Frenchman — that  the  peoples  of 
all  countries,  even  of  that  country  which  still  held 
Alsace  and  Lorraine  and  maintained  the  menace  of  an 
army  which  threatened  France  with  death,  might  be 
united  in  a  common  brotherhood,  based  upon  the 
common  interests  of  a  free  democracy  and  upon  claims 
of  human  nature  nobler  than  national  rivalries,  the  love 
of  wife  and  babes;  the  denial  of  blood  lust  between 
laboring  men;  the  right  to  peace  and  joy  in  life  among 
peoples  in  possession  of  their  soil,  with  ample  security  of 
life's  necessities;  a  little  margin  of  wealth  for  beauty 
and  recreation  for  every  toiler,  and  freedom  from  the 
tyranny  of  governing  classes,  or  overrich  castes,  who 
made  use  of  the  bodies  and  souls  of  humbler  men  for 
financial  warfare  or  imperial   ambitions.     That  in  its 

51 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

essence  and  impulse  was  the  faith  of  Jean  Jaures  and  of 
millions  of  other  men  who  listened  to  his  flaming  words. 
So  I  heard  him  proclaim  it  once  in  a  salle  de  manege 
somewhere  in  a  slum  of  Paris,  where  the  bodies  of  two 
thousand  cheminots  (the  railway  men)  were  pressed 
closely  and  hotly  together,  when  from  their  sweaty 
clothes  came  a  rancid  odor,  and  the  heat  of  their  breath 
was  stifling  in  the  whitewashed  hall. 

He  was  a  revolutionist,  though  without  cruelty  in  his 
heart.  He  proclaimed  "The  International"  and  had  a 
childlike  optimism  in  the  conversion  of  the  German  peo- 
ple to  a  pacifist  gospel.  He  spoke  grandiose  words  about 
"the  solidarity  of  labor"  (the  new  spell  word  of  the 
toilers)  and  helped  to  organize  the  Confederation  General 
du  Travail  with  Briand,  who  defeated  it  when  he  became 
Prime  Minister  for  the  first  time,  because  it  threatened 
to  overthrow  the  social  structure  of  France,  which  had 
once  been  his  own  ambition. 

Jean  Jaures  was  the  champion  of  the  antimilitarists 
and  attacked  the  system  of  the  three  years'  service  in 
France  with  unceasing  eloquence  which  made  him 
feared  and  hated  by  those  who  were  preparing  for  the 
"inevitable"  war  with  the  old  enemy.  He  was  bold 
enough — in  France! — to  denounce  patriotism  as  a  worn- 
out  creed,  an  evil  perpetuation  of  old  feuds,  a  narrow 
passion  that  would  lead  indeed  to  a  new  and  inevitable 
war  unless  it  was  broadened  by  new  meanings — and  no 
one  who  knew  Jaures  believed  that  his  abuse  of  patri- 
otism meant  any  lack  of  love  for  France,  because  he  had 
an  adoration  for  the  French  spirit,  for  her  poetry,  for 
all  her  beauty,  for  Paris  in  every  nook  and  corner 
haunted  by  old  ghosts.  His  enemies  said  he  had  weak- 
ened France  by  his  life's  work,  and  that  I  think  was  true 
in  so  far  as  he  succeeded  in  limiting  expenditure  on 
armaments  and  military  preparations.  By  the  failure 
of  his  philosophy,  the  utter  breakdown  of  his  hope  to 

52 


IDEALS  OF  THE  HUMANISTS 

build  a  bridge  of  peace  between  the  laboring  folk  of 
Germany  and  his  own,  all  his  turbulent  activity  had 
helped  to  make  France  less  certain  of  victory  when  she 
was  faced  by  the  ordeal  of  war — because  he  had  worked, 
not  for  the  victory  of  war,  but  of  peace,  when  there  was 
no  peace.  On  the  first  day  of  war  he  was  struck  down 
by  a  crazy  patriot,  and  I  saw  his  coffin  carried  through 
the  Tuileries,  followed  by  many  who  paid  a  false  homage 
to  his  dead  body  out  of  fear  of  the  mobs  who  had  loved 
him.  But  the  mobs  marched  with  their  battalions  to 
save  France,  as  he  would  have  marched  now  that  his 
hopes  had  failed  of  a  v/orld  united  in  security  and 
brotherhood. 

In  the  opposite  camp — among  the  traditional  enemies 
of  France — there  was  another  leader  of  democracy  who 
was  working  for  the  same  ideals  as  those  of  Jaures,  in  a 
less  inspired  way.  It  was  Edward  Bernstein,  the  leader 
of  the  Social  Democrats.  He,  too,  had  preached  the 
"solidarity  of  labor,"  the  common  interests  of  working 
folk  across  the  frontiers  of  nations,  and  the  doctrine  of 
international  peace.  Those  to  whom  the  Jewish  race 
is  a  bogey  of  evil  working  by  subterranean  ways  to  over- 
turn the  structure  of  civilization,  that  Israel  may  reign 
supreme  above  its  ruin,  will  scofF  at  Bernstein's  name 
and  denounce  him  as  one  of  the  dark  hypocrites  of  that 
frightful  conspiracy.  I  thought  him  an  honest  man, 
within  the  ordinary  limitations  of  political  leaders,  when 
I  met  him  in  Berlin  before  the  war,  and  I  think  so  still. 
So  honest  in  his  estimate  of  actual  conditions  that  he 
confessed  his  despair  to  me  and  the  weakness  of  his  own 
leadership  because  he  saw  the  inevitability  of  the  Arma- 
geddon that  was  coming,  owing  to  the  conflict  of  powers 
and  castes  and  traditions  which  had  more  sway  over 
the  people  than  any  teaching  of  his. 

I  remember  him  now — though  between  then  and 
now  is  the  war  that  was  fought,  and  a  world  that  has 

53 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

changed — sitting  in  a  swing  chair  before  a  roll-top  desk, 
telling  me  things  that  did  not  startle  me,  because  my 
imagination  was  incapable  of  adjusting  itself  to  their 
significance.  His  exact  words  I  have  forgotten,  but  he 
spoke  of  the  lack  of  education  in  international  ideals 
among  the  working  classes  of  Germany.  They  had 
adopted  international  catchwords,  sincerely  but  super- 
ficially. His  teaching  and  that  of  his  predecessors  had 
not  broken  down  national  impulses,  the  vainglory  of 
national  pride,  the  passionate  belief  in  the  invincibility 
of  the  German  army,  the  sense  of  imperial  destiny 
taught  in  the  schools,  the  influences  of  militarism, 
monarchy,  and  racial  loyalty  which  were  inculcated  by 
the  whole  system  and  philosophy  of  German  kultur. 

"If  war  comes,"  said  Bernstein,  *'the  Social  Demo- 
crats who  have  been  theoretical  pacifists  will  march  as 
one  man  against  the  enemy,  whoever  that  may  be.  Our 
ideals  are  still  in  advance  of  the  psychology  of  peoples." 

He  spoke  the  exact  dreadful  truth,  and  at  the  out- 
break of  war  Social  Democracy  in  Germany  betrayed  its 
faith,  unable  to  resist  the  call  to  a  false  patriotism 
which  seemed  higher  then  than  any  other  gospel,  though 
its  aims  were  devihsh.  So  most  other  pacifists  in  all 
countries  found  themselves  compelled  to  declare  a 
moratorium  to  their  hopes  of  international  comradeship 
and  fell  back  to  national  aspirations  on  behalf  ot  a  vic- 
tory which,  for  the  time  being,  seemed — on  both  sides 
of  the  line! — decreed  by  God  for  justice'  sake  and  hu- 
man progress. 

How  foolish,  then,  how  vain  and  mocking  to  poor 
human  toilers  in  world  ideals,  seemed  all  the  efforts  of 
their  Ufe  toward  a  larger  fraternity  of  man!  That  was 
one  of  the  worst  and  most  shocking  tragedies  of  war, 
for  to  these  simple  souls — simple  most  of  them,  in  spite 
of  hard  reading  and  long  research  into  the  history  of 
thought — all  their  faith  came  toppling  down  to  ruin. 

54 


IDEALS  OF  THE  HUMANISTS 

Whatever  God  they  had  worshiped  in  the  secret 
shrines  of  their  hearts  seemed  to  have  betrayed  them. 
The  devils  laughed  at  them,  crying,  "How  now,  simple- 
tons?" For  they  had  believed  that  human  nature  had 
reached  a  stage  when  it  would  refuse  to  go  back  to  the 
old  barbarities  of  wholesale  slaughter  in  the  fields  of 
Europe,  and  that  the  level  of  common  intelligence 
among  "civilized"  peoples  had  been  lifted  above  the 
possibilities  of  such "  a  general  massacre  as  now  must 
happen  among  them.  Elementary  education  had  made 
great  strides.  The  peoples  had  learned  to  read.  They 
had  read  the  little  pamphlets  of  the  Fabian  Society. 
Sidney  Webb  had  lectured  to  them.  H.  G.  Wells  had 
written  his  socialistic  novels  for  them.  G.  B.  Shaw  had 
ridiculed  them  out  of  old  superstitions.  Across  the 
English  Channel,  Anatole  France  was  the  last  of  a  long 
series  of  ironists,  from  Rabelais  onward,  who  had  mocked 
at  the  slavery  of  the  common  folk  under  the  supersti- 
tion of  political  and  tyrannical  dogmas  which  turned 
them  into  gun  fodder  for  the  big  game  of  war,  played  by 
imperialists  and  financiers.  Even  out  of  Russia,  still 
under  tyranny,  still  illiterate  in  the  mass,  had  come  a 
new  prophet  of  peace  and  human  brotherhood — Tolstoy. 
He  had  written  war  and  peace  among  his  other  books, 
stripping  war  bare  of  its  old  illusions,  showing  the  falsity 
of  its  "glory,"  its  squalor  and  cruelty  and  stupidity. 
In  all  great  countries  of  Europe — except  poor  Russia, 
still  in  chains — the  idealists  had  seen  with  eyes  of  faith 
a  general  awakening  of  mass  intelligence  to  the  high 
sanities  of  life — the  reasonable  arrangement  of  inter- 
national peace,  the  closer  comradeship  between  "Labor" 
in  all  countries,  a  higher  standard  of  decency  and  com- 
fort, with  a  little  leisure  and  learning  for  all  citizens  of 
civilized  states,  whose  well-being  at  home  might  be 
secured  by  the  abolition  of  military  burdens,  following 
the  establishment  of   international    arbitration.     That 

55 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

blessed  word — arbitration! — had  been  the  spell  word  of 
the  idealists.  Long  and  ardently  did  they  support  the 
labors  of  the  Hague  Tribunal — the  great  guaranty  of 
world  peace.  In  big  books  and  in  booklets,  how  many  of 
them  devoted  their  time  and  money  to  bring  these  ideals 
to  the  mind  of  the  masses  in  a  spirit  of  self-sacrifice  for 
humanity's  sake!  Then  out  of  the  blue  sky  the  bolt 
fell,  and  with  its  falling  destroyed  all  that  they  had 
striven  to  do,  all  their  spiritual  toil. 

In  every  country  of  Europe  there  were  men  and  women 
stricken  like  that.  I  knew  some  of  them.  With  some  of 
them  I  had  worked,  now  and  then,  half-heartedly,  being 
of  more  frivolous  mind. 

II 

I  saw  the  tragedy  of  one  of  them  a  few  days  after  the 
outbreak  of  war,  in  Paris,  when  the  first  trainloads  of 
mobilises  were  going  eastward  to  Toul  and  Belfort  and 
the  frontiers  of  Alsace  and  Lorraine — few  northward 
where  the  great  shadow  was  creeping  close — and  all  the 
streets  of  Paris  were  filled  with  the  passion  of  eternal 
partings.  It  was  George  Herbert  Perris,  one  of  the  most 
untiring  laborers  on  the  road  to  international  peace. 
I  describe  him,  not  because  he  was  a  famous  man,  though 
his  activity  was  known  in  many  countries,  but  because 
he  was  a  type  of  many  similar  minds  in  England.  All 
his  working  life  a  journalist  and  public  speaker,  his  pen 
had  never  betrayed  his  principles,  and  his  enthusiasm 
and  ardor  had  been  boyish,  genially  intolerant  of  all 
poor  blockheads  and  reactionaries  who  did  not  believe 
with  him  that  victory  was  in  sight — victory  for  a  world 
court  of  arbitration,  for  general  disarmament — (how 
fiercely  and  with  what  joyful  irony  he  had  exposed  the 
commercial  activities  of  armament  firms  who  grew  rich 
out  of  war-making!)  and  for  a  fraternal  democracy  of 
peoples  across  the  frontiers  of  nationality.     He  was  a 

S6 


IDEALS  OF  THE  HUMANISTS 

disciple  of  Tolstoy  and  had  written  his  life  with  rever- 
ence, though  he  could  not  follow  the  old  man  through  all 
his  gospel,  which,  in  the  end,  was  near  to  madness,  for 
Perris  was  practical  and  in  a  mystical  sense  unspiritual. 
He  had  sheltered  Russian  revolutionaries  in  his  suburban 
home,  was  the  friend  of  men  Hke  Kropotkin,  and  his 
pen  had  traveled  over  reams  of  paper  recording  the 
martyrdom  of  those  who  struggled  for  Russian  freedom. 
He  was,  in  his  character  and  activities,  typical  of  many 
groups  of  intellectual  workers  who  in  London,  Liverpool, 
and  other  Enghsh  cities  devoted  themselves  to  com- 
mittee work  (after  hours  of  professional  toil  to  keep 
small  homes  above  the  poverty  line)  on  behalf  of  the 
*' Brotherhood  of  Man"  and  all  downtrodden  folk  from 
Camden  Town  to  Congo. 

In  Paris  I  found  him,  after  he  had  been  carried  back 
with  the  tide  of  refugees  from  the  frontiers  of  war — he 
was  the  delegate  to  a  meeting  of  the  Peace  League! — 
and  in  the  shabby  bedroom  of  the  little  Hotel  du  Dauphin 
in  the  rue  St.  Roch  he  confessed  his  agony  to  me.  I 
remember  now  the  gray  look  of  his  face,  and  his  nervous 
movements  in  that  little  room,  and  his  cry  of  despair. 

*'This  makes  a  mockery  of  all  my  life,"  he  said. 
"Everything  that  I  believed  is  now  untrue.  Everything 
I  hoped  is  broken.  This  puts  back  civilization  a  hundred 
years.  There  is  only  one  explanation  and  that  is  of  no 
avail.    It  is  that  Germany  has  gone  mad." 

In  some  such  words  he  spoke  to  me,  hour  after  hour, 
while  down  in  the  street  Frenchmen  were  trudging  with 
their  wives  to  the  railway  stations,  where  they  would 
say  "Adieu!"  and  go  to  unknown  horrors. 

"This  war,"  said  Perris,  "the  abominable  criminality 
of  the  German  attack,  has  killed  me  as  a  pacifist.  Until 
Germany  is  defeated  I  am  a  believer  in  war  to  the  death, 
for  unless  Germany  is  punished  for  this  crime  and  utterly 
broken,  there  can  be  no  hope  for  the  world." 

5  57 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

He,  too,  like  thousands  of  other  men,  declared  a  mora- 
torium of  all  international  ideals  for  so  long  as  the 
enemy  remained  unbeaten,  but  for  Perris,  as  for  some 
others,  this  change  of  spirit  was  like  tearing  out  his  soul. 
The  cold  passion  of  his  hatred  for  the  German  war  lords 
who  had  caused  this  agony  was  religious  in  its  devotion. 
He  became  a  war  correspondent  with  the  French  army, 
whose  valor  and  sacrifice  he  learned  to  admire  with  all 
the  homage  of  his  heart.  One  of  the  greatest  pacifists  in 
England  was  decorated  with  the  Legion  of  Honor  for 
his  services  to  the  French  army,  and  kissed  on  both 
cheeks  by  the  French  general  who  conferred  it.  After 
the  war  I  met  my  friend  again,  older  by  more  than  the 
four  and  a  half  years  of  war,  worn  and  frail  after  the 
strain  of  it.  He  was  at  Geneva,  in  the  Hotel  du  Beau 
Rivage,  during  the  Assembly  of  the  League  of  Nations, 
and  we  had  long  talks  together.  He  had  gone  back  to 
his  faith  and  philosophy  before  the  war — indeed  he 
maintained  that  he  had  never  changed  any  of  his  ideals. 
But  I  think  that  with  him,  as  with  many  men,  the  years 
of  war  had  been  a  separate  adventure  of  soul,  something 
apart  and  distinct  from  all  previous  thought  and  imag- 
ination, having  no  relation  to  previous  qualities  of 
character.  Afterward  the  experience  of  it  vanished  as 
a  nightmare,  and  men  tried  to  pick  up  the  threads  of  the 
previous  life  as  they  had  left  them,  and  wondered  why 
they  failed  and  fumbled. 

Perris  was  marvelous  in  the  way  he  seemed  to  have 
gone  back  to  his  old  way  of  thought.  I  think  he  emerged 
from  the  war  with  his  previous  ideals  sharpened  and 
hardened  and  deeper  dug,  though  with  more  caution 
in  his  method  of  persuasion,  and  with  less  intolerance 
of  opposition.  But  he  was  not  so  cynical  as  younger 
men  who  surrounded  him,  and  his  laughter  rang  out 
in  challenge  to  colleagues  who  jeered  at  this  work  of 
the    League    of   Nations.     ''Reactionaries!"    he    cried. 

58 


IDEALS  OF  THE  HUMANISTS 

"This  League  holds  all  the  hope  of  the  new  world  that 
is  coming.  You  expect  too  much  of  it  at  first.  We  are 
on  the  right  lines  and  doing  good  work  for  the  healing 
of  the  wounded  world."  So  he  spoke  and  worked 
until  he  died,  there  in  Geneva,  a  veteran  in  the  cause  of 
international  peace,  though  the  oldest  and  the  newest 
nations  were  even  then  digging  new  trenches  against 
the  international  ideal! 

At  the  funeral,  when  I  stood  by  the  coffin  of  my 
friend,  I  saluted  him  as  one  of  the  Old  Guard.  Others, 
old  comrades  of  his  in  the  work  of  his  life,  stood  up  to 
pay  their  tribute  to  him,  and  men  like  G.  N.  Barnes,  the 
Labor  Member  and  Privy  Councilor,  remembered 
the  old  ardent  days  when  they,  like  him,  had  believed 
that  humanity,  free  in  common  sense,  would  have  no 
more  of  war  on  the  universal  scale  .  .  .  Perris  was  but 
a  type,  and  a  noble  one,  of  many  self-sacrificing  men  in 
England  who  did  the  spade  work  of  a  new  world  without 
public  recognition  or  hope  of  fame. 

Ill 

Rewarded  by  fame,  immensely  fortunate  in  material 
success  and  recognition  of  many-sided  genius,  one 
idealist  is  working  away  with  the  energy  and  precision 
of  an  American  reaper-and-binder  to  clear  the  ground 
of  human  intellect  from  its  undergrowth  of  ignorance 
and  prejudice,  so  that  a  fair  new  world,  dedicated  to 
human  reason,  may  be  built  by  youth  thereon.  That 
is  H.  G.  Wells,  one  of  the  most  whimsical  prophets  and 
philosophers  in  the  history  of  ideas.  In  many  ways  he 
must  take  first  place  among  the  idealists  who  are  trying 
to  scheme  out  a  new  social  structure,  because  he  is  more 
valuable  than  any  of  them,  most  audacious  in  his  far- 
reaching  plans,  most  definite,  precise,  and  practical  in 
his    program,  and   not   so  "wild"  in    his    methods  of 

59 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

argument  as  those  who  would  tear  down  the  existing 
structure  regardless  of  human  tragedy  before  attempting 
to  build  upon  the  ruin.  H.  G.  Wells  has  the  artfulness 
of  the  "restorer"  of  ancient  monuments,  who,  by  under- 
pinning and  other  architectural  dodges,  produces  a 
brand-new  building  without  outraging  public  senti- 
ment by  obvious  destruction  of  the  old.  By  this  method 
he  is  able  to  avoid  the  charge  of  being  a  "  revolutionary, " 
his  articles  are  printed  in  newspapers  supported  by 
the  defenders  and  producers  of  "Capital,"  and  he  is 
invited  out  to  dinner  with  moderately  respectable 
people,  including  British  generals,  to  whose  head- 
quarters he  went  during  the  war  with  a  special  pass 
from  G.  H.  Q. 

That  is  a  little  strange,  when  one  considers  the  pres- 
ent nervousness  of  English  society  and  the  deep  sus- 
picion of  the  military  mind  on  the  subject  of  revolu- 
tionary literature.  For  H.  G.  Wells  is  more  revolu- 
tionary in  his  ideals  than  men  of  the  trade  unions  or 
of  the  Parliamentary  Labor  Party,  who  are  branded 
as  "Bolsheviks"  by  their  Conservative  opponents. 
While  they  are  thinking  mostly  in  terms  of  national 
politics,  to  secure  more  democratic  control  of  the  national 
state,  H.  G.  Wells  is  theoretically  flinging  down  fron- 
tiers, overturning  the  last  remaining  dynasties,  forming 
a  universal  aUiance  of  Labor  and  establishing  the 
United  States  of  the  World.  It  is  the  very  magnificence 
of  his  conceptions  that  disarms  all  sense  of  fear  among 
those  who  are  fearful.  They  read  his  visions  of  that  new 
world  state  as  with  amusement  and  interest  they  read 
his  "War  of  the  Worlds"  and  his  "Food  of  the  Gods," 
things  too  fantastic  to  be  frightening.  Then,  too,  he  is 
labeled  as  a  "funny  man."  The  author  of  Kipps  and 
Mr.  Polly  and  Tono  Bungay,  vastly  entertaining  even 
to  "nice  people"  of  the  leisured  classes,  is  not,  they 
think,  to  be  taken  seriously  when  he  begins  to  write 

60 


IDEALS  OF  THE  HUMANISTS 

about  God  or  the  English  political  system.  Perhaps 
they  are  right,  instinctively  and  surely.  It  is  the 
tragedy  of  H.  G.  Wells  (though  he  is  not  a  tragic  figure) 
that  his  sense  of  humor  and  the  spirit  of  comedy  that 
presided  at  his  birth  prevent  him  from  stirring  the 
faith  and  emotion  of  people  who  are  seeking  guidance 
through  the  jungle  darkness  of  this  world.  Though 
he  holds  a  light  before  him,  sometimes  a  clear-shining 
light  of  common  sense,  they  suspect  him  of  Pucklike 
tricks  that  are  only  a  lure  into  deep  thickets.  In  spite 
of  the  beauty  of  some  of  his  thoughts  (as  in  a  book 
like  Mr.  Britling  Sees  It  Throughy  where  he  was  more 
sincere,  more  emotional  in  his  sense  of  life's  tragedy 
than  ever  before),  they  hear  from  afar  his  goblin  laugh- 
ter, sec  the  mischievous  glint  of  his  sideways  glance. 
They  are  not  sure,  either,  of  any  divine  fire  in  the  man, 
any  true  nobility  of  soul  which  must  be  the  attribute 
of  those  who  would  lead  humanity  to  a  higher  range  of 
goodness.  In  several  of  his  books  he  thrusts  forward  a 
little  vulgar  man  as  his  hero — he  exaggerates  his  defects 
— rather  below  the  ordinary  standard  of  the  social  code, 
not  because  of  the  things  he  is  pleased  to  do,  but  because 
of  the  way  he  is  pleased  to  described  them.  He  finds  a 
comical  pride  in  thrusting  this  vulgarian  before  the 
fastidious,  as  though  to  say,  "We  are  all  hke  this,  and 
I  dare  say  so!"  But  the  teachers  of  the  world  have 
not  been  like  that.  They  have  been  great  sinners,  but 
not  little  cads.  They  have  agonized  over  their  frailty, 
not  found  it  rather  good,  and  anyhow  quite  usual  as  a 
habit  of  the  times. 

It  was  the  desire  of  H.  G.  Wells  to  show  his  minute 
particular  knowledge  of  the  modern  type  of  youth  and 
middle  age  in  the  great  new  middle  classes  which  made 
him  put  in  these  touches  for  the  sake  of  truth.  And 
they  are  true — true  to  the  little  lives  of  millions  whose 
adventure  of  soul  is  confined  by  small  proprieties,  and 

6i 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

whose  sins  are  little  sordid,  secret  immoralities.     But 
that  microscopic  treatment  of  modern  life  has  hampered 
Wells  in  his  larger  visions,  and  tripped  up  his  devotees. 
I  think  his  sense  of  humor,  his  easy  tolerance  of  common 
weakness,   not  tender-hearted   and   all-embracing,    but 
critical  and  sarcastic,  trips  up  his   own   steps   toward 
the  higher  ranges  of  thought.     He  stops  to  laugh  at 
himself,  as  when  he  said  to  me  once,  after  an  earnest 
conversation  about  the  attributes  of  the  Divine  Power, 
"You  would  hardly  believe  how  much  I  am  nuzzling 
up   to   God!"     His   mysticism   fell   w4th   a   crash;   his 
groping  for  some  higher  authority  than  human  reason 
was  mocked  by  this  guffaw.     In  his  country  house,  in 
Essex,    described   in   all   delightful   detail   in   the   first 
chapters  of  Mr.  Britling  (even  the  German  tutor  was 
drawn  to  life),  and   in   his  rooms   in   London   I   have 
seen  H.  G.  Wells  among  his  friends  and  watched  the 
man  who,  beyond  any  doubt,  is  one  of  the  leaders  of 
modern  thought,  one  of  the  most  active,  untiring,  ardent, 
courageous   "reformers"  of  this  society.     It  was  sur- 
prising to  me  that  I  felt  no  sense  of  being  in  the  com- 
pany of  greatness,  nor  of  being  inspired  by  the  light  of 
genius.     He  made  little  jests,  shrewd  little  comments, 
amusing  and  interesting  to  hear,  and  he  was  very  watch- 
ful of  his  company,  as  I  saw  by  the  quick,  penetrating, 
sideways  looks  which    registered    them    and    all   their 
small  tricks  of  manner  in  his  photographic  mind.     But 
he  had  not  the  sure  dogmatism  of  a  man  who  has  grappled 
with  truth  and  with  the  elemental  problems  of  Hfe  and 
come  with  some  certain  faith  out  of  dark  hours.     Nor 
had  he  the  smiling  irony  of  men  who  have  come  through 
such  hours,  not  with  any  certain  faith,  but  with  a  tender 
and  melancholy  skepticism  which  makes  them  benev- 
olent to  life,  very  tolerant,  wise  in  the  knowledge  of 
their   ignorance.     H.    G.    Wells    is    assertive,    dogmatic 
like  a  school-teacher,  rapid   in  thought,   as  the  well- 

62 


IDEALS  OF  THE  HUMANISTS 

trained  journalist  he  is,  whimsical,  restless,  and  uneasy. 
In  his  work  he  is  Hke  that — quick,  journaHstic,  cock- 
sure, slick  in  the  craftsmanship  of  his  ideas.  Yet,  after 
all,  astonishing  in  the  universal  range  and  energy  of 
his  endeavors,  in  the  courage  of  his  ideas,  the  gallant 
way  he  takes  all  the  world  for  his  province,  all  history 
for  his  background,  all  the  future  for  his  prophecy,  all 
humanity  for  his  microscope.  He  has,  perhaps  more 
than  any  living  writer  in  the  EngUsh  language,  stirred 
up  the  common  mind  to  think  beyond  the  little  bound- 
aries of  suburban  experience,  to  see  his  own  little  life 
as  in  a  mirror,  to  feel  in  closer  touch  with  the  big  move- 
ments of  the  human  family,  and  to  desire  more  knowl- 
edge of  history  and  science  in  order  to  Hft  the  human 
race,  and  his  own  personality,  to  a  cleaner  and  nobler 
stage  of  social  progress.  That  is  a  big  thing  to  do,  and 
H.  G.  Wells,  in  spite  of  httle  characteristics  not  belong- 
ing to  the  highest  genius,  has  been  big  in  endeavor  and 
achievement  up  to  that  point.  With  the  clean,  sharp 
weapon  of  his  pen  he  is  now  educating  the  middle- 
class  mind  in  the  international  idea,  which  has  the  uni- 
versal brotherhood  of  man  as  its  great  ideal. 

IV 

The  "Mob"  (as  it  used  to  be  called  with  contempt), 
not  belonging  to  the  middle  class,  but  to  the  ranks  of 
labor — the  intelligent  mechanic,  the  factory  hand, 
the  skilled  laborer — is  being  educated  toward  the 
same  ideal  by  pamphleteers  and  tract  writers  unknown 
by  name  to  all  outside  that  class,  and  by  local  oratory 
and  debating  societies,  and  private  conversations  be- 
tween shifts  of  work,  for  mixed  up  with  idealism  is  the 
hard  selfishness  of  narrow  trade  interests,  a  cruelty  of 
hatred  of  the  class  above,  and  the  wild  fervor  of  revolu- 
tionary propaganda  which  has  no  motive  but  destruction. 

63 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

Between  the  incalculable  ferment  that  is  at  work 
among  the  masses  of  working  people  in  all  countries  of 
Europe — as  yet  we  do  not  know  what  will  rise  out  of 
that  yeasty  thought — and  the  theoretical  adventures 
in  reconstruction  by  the  intellectual  reformers,  there 
is  an  immense  chasm  of  psychology  so  far  unbridged. 
There  is,  as  yet,  no  one  in  Europe — at  least  I  do  not 
know  him — who  speaks  with  the  voice  of  the  people, 
whose  words  find  an  echoing  thrill  in  the  heart  of  the 
people,  whose  leadership  and  magic  personality  are 
acknowledged  by  the  people. 

No  writer  has  appeared  of  late  to  be  the  interpreter 
of  the  great  multitude,  as  Charles  Dickens  was  in  his 
time  and  within  the  hmitations  of  his  contemporary 
thought.  No  poet  hke  Victor  Hugo  has  arisen  to  call 
to  the  soul  of  his  folk  with  a  music  of  words  which  was 
magic  to  every  Frenchman,  so  that  they  vibrated  to 
his  rhythm,  were  inspired  by  his  passion.  No  man  of 
action  has  humanity  behind  him,  ready  to  go  where  he 
beckons,  as  once  Napoleon  led  his  legions  in  the  name 
of  hberty  and  glory  to  many  battlefields  where  their 
bones  were  strewn.  No  religious  teacher  has  come  out 
of  study  or  cloister  to  utter  thunder  words  before  which 
the  multitudes  tremble  and  fall  down,  in  obedience  to 
him,  or  words  of  love  giving  life  a  new  sweetness  even 
in  sacrifice,  and  a  sense  of  richness  in  poverty.  Our 
leaders  of  thought  seem  to  be  enormously  ignorant  of 
the  instincts,  ideas,  and  purposes  of  humanity  in  the 
mass,  of  their  suffering,  their  agonies,  their  hopes,  their 
passions.  Too  many  of  them  talk  from  high,  bleak 
altitudes,  in  the  accents  of  cultured  castes,  in  unpop- 
ular language,  and  without  the  fire  of  human  love  to 
warm  the  heart  of  the  crowd. 

Typical  of  such  men  seems  to  me  Lord  Robert  Cecil 
in  many  ways,  by  many  qualities,  the  leader  of  the  new 
political    ideaUsm    in    English    culture.     He    stood    for 

64 


IDEALS  OF  THE  HUMANISTS 

honesty  and  honor  and  truth  at  a  time  when  the  bar- 
gain between  half-hearted  Liberals  and  Tory  reaction- 
aries had  resulted  in  a  Coalition  Parliament  which 
voted  bhndly  at  the  dictates  of  the  Prime  Minister  and 
his  Cabinet,  surrendering  their  duty  of  criticism,  de- 
fending every  ill-conceived  act,  every  extravagance  of 
policy,  all  unwisdom  due  to  the  narrow  reactionary 
brains  of  the  Prime  Minister's  masters  (his  very  soul 
was  surrendered  to  them  as  a  bargain  for  political 
kingship),  with  a  tame  acquiescence  hardly  known 
before  in  the  history  of  the  House  of  Commons.  Al- 
though a  Conservative  by  instinct  and  education, 
above  all  by  the  immense  influence  of  his  family  history 
and  the  almost  sacred  traditions  of  the  House  of  Cecil 
as  the  divinely  appointed  rulers  and  protectors  of 
England,  intrenched  against  revolutionary  change  and 
dangerous  tendencies  of  thought  (had  it  not  been  so 
for  four  hundred  years?).  Lord  Robert's  sense  of  honor, 
his  sensitive  repugnance  to  injustice  and  brutality, 
his  ethical  faith  in  Christianity  appHed  to  political 
principles,  made  him  revolt  from  the  intrigues,  bar- 
gainings, sinister  adventures,  and  callous  indifference 
to  the  ideals  which  had  been  the  watchwords  of  war 
— liberty,  the  self-determination  of  peoples,  the  war  to 
end  war — revealed  by  the  Ministers  of  the  Coalition 
and  their  rabble  of  sycophants.  He  at  least  was  a 
gentleman,  fastidious  and  nice  in  his  sense  of  honor, 
contrasting  with  the  liars,  the  sharpers,  and  low-bred 
adventurers  who  surrounded  the  Prime  Minister,  like 
Poins,  Bardolph,  Nym,  and  Pistol,  and  the  wild  cronies 
of  Harry's  youth. 

His  vision  of  world  peace  was  on  nobler  lines  than 
national  greeds,  and  as  the  representative  of  South 
Africa  (which  gave  him  greater  liberty  of  action  with- 
out committing  the  Cabinet  to  his  policy)  he  did  more 
than  any  other  man  in  Europe  to  uphold  the  ideals  of 

65 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

the  League  of  Nations  and  to  fashion  the  Assembly 
out  of  a  chaotic  crowd,  without  precedents  of  procedure, 
into  a  real  ParHament  of  Nations  before  which  the  for- 
eign delegates  could  bring  their  proposals  for  orderly 
debate. 

His  long,  lank  figure,  with  hunched  shoulders  and 
ascetic,  monkHke  face,  arrested  the  imagination  of  all 
members  in  an  Assembly  which  represented  twenty-one 
nations,  and  they  watched  his  appearances  on  the  plat- 
form, his  repeated  risings  to  points  of  order,  and  the 
cold  fervor  of  his  enthusiasm  for  abstract  principles 
and  legal  niceties,  with  an  unabated  interest  in  a  strange 
psychology.  One  Frenchman  by  my  side  in  the  gallery, 
looking  down  upon  him,  made  a  grotesque  comment 
in  English  which  I  am  sure  was  a  mistranslation  of  the 
phrase  he  wanted  to  use.  "This  Lord  Robert,"  he 
whispered,  "is  Hke  a  debauched  clergyman!"  What  I 
fancy  he  meant  to  say  was  an  "unfrocked  priest,"  and 
certainly  there  is  in  Lord  Robert  Cecil's  face  and  manner 
the  continual  suggestion  of  a  monastic  soul,  or,  rather, 
an  ecclesiastical  quality.  He  seems  a  dedicated  man, 
superior  by  ascetic  habit  to  all  human  frailties,  with 
the  dryness  of  the  old  schoolmen  in  his  method  of 
thought.  He  stands  as  a  rare  figure  in  English  political 
life,  fine  in  courtesy,  never  stooping  to  baseness,  an 
aristocrat  of  intellect  and  temperament.  With  broader 
qualities,  more  "fire  in  his  belly,"  more  love  and  knowl- 
edge of  common  folk,  he  would  be  the  ideal  leader  of  a 
new  march  forward  in  the  adventure  of  English  life. 
But  that  ecclesiastical  manner  and  the  legal  twist  of 
his  brain  and  an  unconscious  air  of  superiority  to 
fellow  men  (not  insolent,  but  inherent  in  his  very  being) 
will  never  gain  for  him  the  following  of  great  legions. 

Yet  as  one  of  the  "Intellectuals"  in  England,  he  has 
a  high  and  worthy  place,  and  is  a  standard  bearer  in 
the  spiritual  conflict  against  the  forces  of  evil  which 

66 


IDEALS  OF  THE  HUMANISTS 

threaten  to  submerge  the  European  peoples.  For  the 
larger  liberty  of  Ireland,  from  coercion  and  reprisals  in 
a  miserable  time  of  terror  and  counter-terror,  he  has 
spoken  according  to  the  old  standards  of  English  jus- 
tice and  honor  when  these  were  forgotten  by  ministers 
of  state  and  their  hirelings  in  dirty  work.  For  modera- 
tion toward  the  beaten  enemy,  with  justice  based  on 
reason  rather  than  passion,  when  all  nations  of  Europe 
must  unite  for  economic  recovery  or  surely  perish, 
he  has  worked  with  intellectual  devotion  and  risked 
the  anger  of  a  Hun-howUng  press  which  still  has  power 
to  break  a  public  man  if  they  hate  the  virtue  in  him. 
He  has  never  swerved  in  his  behef  that  force  is  the 
worst  way  of  argument  if  ever  reason  gets  a  chance  for 
settlement  by  consent,  and  that  is  his  gospel  for  the 
recovery  of  Europe,  if  fools  will  stop  their  folly,  as  he 
once  told  me,  while  his  long  arms  clasped  his  long  legs 
and  his  ascetic  face  was  just  as  a  craftsman  monk  would 
have  carved  a  prior  in  stone  for  a  cloister  effigy — 
conscious  of  authority,  strong  in  self-discipline,  dry 
in  humor. 


A  powerful  little  group  of  Intellectuals — not  revolu- 
tionary, but  "advanced" — surround  H.  W.  Massing- 
ham,  editor  of  The  Nation^  and  he  is  certainly  one  of 
the  guiding  spirits  in  the  intellectual  life  of  England.  A 
strange  man  I  have  always  thought  him,  in  brief  en- 
counters, with  something  dark,  mysterious,  and  Celtic 
in  his  psychology.  Something  cankered  him  years  ago, 
some  secret  of  his  soul — disappointed  ambition  or  tragic 
contempt  of  human  nature  which  would  not  go  the  way 
he  hoped.  Long  before  the  war  he  was  a  bitter  man, 
darkly  melancholy,  and  with  a  cold  ferocity  of  attack 
when  he  drove  his  pen  against  political  opponents  or 

(>7 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

literary  pretenders.  He  has  always  been  prone  to  see 
virtue  in  all  countries  but  his  own,  and  has  been  such  a 
lover  of  liberty  that  he  has  almost  defended  German 
militarism  itself  when  defeated  by  stronger  force.  Anti- 
imperialist,  anti-protectionist,  anti-everything  in  which 
the  Tory  mind  has  found  its  gospel,  and  the  popular 
crowd  its  war  cries,  he  has  been  the  most  acid  critic  of 
all  that  John  Bull  stands  for  in  character  and  caricature, 
and  John  Bull,  not  the  paper,  but  the  type,  has  hated 
him  for  years  as  a  traitor,  a  crawling  pacifist,  a  coward, 
and  a  dirty  dog.  He  is  not  a  traitor,  but  a  sensitive 
plant  to  any  touch  of  brutality  or  injustice  that  seems 
to  him  hurtful  to  the  good  name  of  England  and  to  the 
human  family.  He  so  hates  cruelty  to  the  under  dog, 
the  weak,  the  ignorant,  that  he  is  cruel  himself  in  his 
attacks  upon  those  who  seem  to  him  bullies  in  their 
nature  and  methods.  He  is  almost  morbid  in  his 
hatred  of  spiritual  and  physical  pain,  and  agonizes  over 
the  sufferings  of  men  and  women  and  animals  and 
birds  in  this  cruel  conflict  of  life.  The  war  to  him  was 
the  supreme  downfall  of  the  civilized  ideal,  the  great 
darkness  of  our  soul  and  time,  and  in  his  oflSce  in  the 
Adelphi  he  suffered  with  the  sufferings  of  all  the  wounded, 
blinded,  agonized  men. 

He  never  wanted  "  victoiy."  He  wanted  only  "peace." 
He  was  what  the  French  called  a  defaitiste  because 
for  a  long  time  before  the  armistice  he  clung  to  every 
hope  of  a  negotiated  peace,  strove  by  all  the  power  of 
his  pen  to  destroy  the  policy  of  the  "knock-out  blow," 
and  was  the  fierce,  unrelenting  critic  of  ministerial 
stupidities  in  the  management  of  the  war,  not  because 
he  wanted  the  war  better  managed,  but  quicker  ended, 
by  popular  disgust.  He  had  but  one  glimpse  of  war's 
horror  on  the  battlefields  when  he  went  on  a  few  days' 
visit  to  the  western  front.  He  had  been  invited  by 
the  "propaganda"  side  of  the  Army  Intelligence  which 

68 


I 


IDEALS  OF  THE  HUMANISTS 

had  a  simple  belief  that  a  sight  of  the  men  in  the  trenches 
and  at  the  guns  would  convert  any  pacifist  into  a  howl- 
ing "Hun  hater."  Massingham  came  and  saw.  He 
stood  by  a  battery  of  six-pounders  up  by  Posieres  in 
the  Somme  fields  and  every  round  fired  seemed  to  hurt 
him  hke  a  nail  driven  through  the  head.  The  roar  of 
artillery  and  the  answering  scream  of  German  shells 
seemed  to  vibrate  every  quivering  nerve  in  his  body  and 
brain.  The  leprous  look  of  those  shell-plowed  fields, 
where  no  blade  of  grass  grew  under  the  flail  of  steel, 
deepened  the  pallor  of  his  face,  and  in  his  eyes  was  the 
horror  of  a  man  who  sees  hell  before  him. 

Yet  in  moral  courage  Massingham  has  had  few  equals, 
for  he  dared  to  attack  a  government  invested  with 
absolute  power  over  the  liberty  of  its  citizens,  under 
the  Defense  of  the  Realm  Act  ("Dora"  as  the  wits 
called  it),  which  in  time  of  war  and  long  afterward  was 
a  sharp  and  ruthless  weapon  against  those  who  spoke 
or  wrote  against  its  acts,  authority,  and  judgment. 
He  challenged  popular  opinion  at  a  time  when  it  was 
passionate  and  brutal.  His  letter  box  received  many 
threats  of  violence,  sometimes  a  menace  of  death.  He 
paid  no  heed  to  them,  but  one  friend  of  mine,  loyal  to 
this  man  of  ice  and  fire,  used  to  follow  him  secretly 
when  he  left  his  office  at  night,  to  be  close  if  any  ruffian 
made  a  pounce.  In  allegiance  to  Massingham,  many 
of  them  his  lifelong  associates  in  revolt  against  cruelty 
wherever  it  might  be  found,  are  such  men  as  Henry 
Nevinson,  J.  L.  Hammond,  H.  N.  Brailsford,  H.  M. 
Tomlinson,  knights-errant  of  the  pen,  crusaders  all  on 
behalf  of  the  Holy  Land  which  dwells  in  their  vision. 


VI 

For  years  before  the  Great  War,  Nevinson  was  a 
follower  of  little  wars,  as  an  old   type   of  war  corre- 

69 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

spondent,  always  hating  the  stupidity  of  that  way  of 
argument,  and  its  beasthness,  yet  always  allying  him- 
self with  any  people  fighting  for  liberty.  Between  the 
wars  of  nations,  he  was  an  onlooker  of  revolutions  and 
civil  strife,  writing  on  the  side  of  the  under  dog,  a  par- 
tisan of  those  who  challenged  tyranny. 

Nevinson  was  bravest  and  most  quixotic  when  he 
faced  the  ridicule  of  his  own  people  by  espousing  the 
cause  of  the  militant  suffragettes.  Many  times  in  the 
days  of  that  strange  feminine  adventure  to  which  cold 
logic,  self-sacrifice  for  political  ideals,  and  a  sense  of 
humor  were  mixed  up  with  wild  hysteria  and  the  vicious- 
ness  of  thwarted  women,  have  I  seen  Nevinson,  as  the 
one  male  escort  of  suffragette  demonstrators  forcing 
their  way  through  rowdy  and  riotous  mobs  into  which 
mounted  police  were  charging  and  foot  police  were 
overwhelmed  by  the  pressure  of  human  weight.  Nevin- 
son's  tall  form,  with  silver  hair  and  bronzed  face,  had  a 
knightly  look  then  as  always,  but  men  chose  him  for 
their  rough  handhng.  He  was  a  tough  customer  to 
handle,  and  once  at  the  Albert  Hall  when  he  sprang  to 
the  rescue  of  a  woman  who  had  been  struck  down  by  a 
coward's  blow,  he  gave  battle  to  a  company  of  stewards 
who  fell  upon  him,  and  dented  several  of  them  before 
they  flung  him  out — this  noble,  mild-eyed  man,  so  full 
of  courtesy,  so  benignant,  so  wise  and  witty,  such  a 
scholar  and  gentleman. 

We  met  in  the  Great  War,  in  strange  and  menacing 
places.  In  the  first  days  on  the  Belgian  coast,  as  when 
we  paced  the  esplanade  at  Nieuport  when  our  shells 
were  screaming  overhead  from  monitors  at  sea,  and 
presently  German  shells  answered  back  and  smashed 
into  the  houses  about  us.  Nevinson  strolled  up  and 
down,  up  and  down,  with  a  most  tranquil  courage.  .  .  . 
Our  ways  parted,  and  then  met  again  toward  the  end 

of  the  war  when  he  came  again  to  the  western  front, 

70  • 


•  H 


IDEALS  OF  THE  HUMANISTS 

walked  toward  German  machine-gun  fire  as  though 
it  were  but  raindrops,  received  the  surrender  of  German, 
prisoners  from  a  crowded  dugout,  though  quite  unarmed, 
and  as  a  war  correspondent  received  salutes  from  all 
the  army,  because  he  looked  as  a  "field  marshal" 
would  like  to  look. 

It  was  inevitable  that  Nevinson  should  champion 
the  Irish  cause.  It  was  waiting  for  him.  Has  he  not 
been  on  the  side  of  all  little  nations  demanding  liberty.? 
In  Ireland  after  the  war  he  has  been  chronicling  in  his 
cold,  unimpassioned  way  the  history  of  murder  and  ret- 
ribution, ambush  and  reprisal,  with  an  intellectual  bias 
in  favor  of  the  Irish  people  who  are  suffering  under 
all  this  anarchy  because  they  will  not  surrender  their 
claim  to  be  a  nation,  separated  by  race  and  faith,  by 
long  and  tragic  memories,  by  fires  of  hatred  inflamed 
in  the  passion  of  this  recent  history,  from  England,  which 
seeks  to  impose  her  rule  as  on  a  subject  people,  by  force 
of  arms.  Death  dodged  Nevinson  in  the  Great  War. 
Some  bullet  will  find  him  in  Dublin  or  in  some  civil 
strife  at  home. 

VII 

And  Tomlinson,  whom  Nevinson  loves  as  I  do — 
what  a  strange  assistant-editor  to  Massingham,  his 
chief!  Massingham's  blood  runs  cold,  but  Tomlinson 
has  a  burning  fever  in  him.  Massingham  has  the 
fastidious  manner  of  an  intellectual  aristocrat,  rather 
arrogant  in  his  range  of  classical  and  modern  knowledge. 
Tomlinson,  born  down  Wapping  way,  the  son  of  a 
skipper,  belongs  to  the  people  of  poverty  and  humility, 
except  by  a  genius  which  lifts  him  above  them  and  most 
of  us,  however  polished.  In  his  youth  he  discovered 
the  magic  of  words  and  found  that  he  could  capture 
its  secret.     To  him  words  are  jewels.     By  digging  for 

71 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

them  as  they  lie  hidden  below  the  rubbish  of  common- 
place speech,  he  finds  in  their  sound  the  harmonies  of 
beauty  that  lie  deep  in  them,  and  wonderful  architec- 
tural values  when  he  goes  building  with  them.  Yet 
he  never  uses  words  as  a  substitute  for  thought,  for  more 
sensuous  music.  He  is  a  realist  in  his  way  of  thinking, 
cutting  his  way  deep  and  ruthlessly  to  truth,  seeing 
life  with  its  cruelty,  its  stupidity,  its  incoherence  and 
fumbling.  He  has  written  two  good  books,  The  Sea 
and  the  Jungle  and  The  Port  of  London,  but  it  is 
as  a  journalist,  mainly  anonymous,  that  he  has  done 
much  of  his  best  work.  More  than  as  a  writer,  his 
personality  counts  with  those  who  know  him — a  whim- 
sical personality,  with  a  face  like  a  friendly  gargoyle 
on  a  Gothic  church,  smiling  down  at  humanity  passing. 
He  has  an  ironical  humor  that  makes  one  laugh  with 
twisted  entrails  when  he  is  mocking  at  life's  pomposi- 
ties. A  son  of  the  people,  he  remains  a  lover  of  the  peo- 
ple, though  he  knows  their  ignorance,  their  sheeplike 
instincts,  their  frenzies  and  passions.  The  war,  of 
which  he  saw  much  as  a  war  correspondent,  left  him  with 
a  bleeding  soul.  He  groaned  over  the  agonies  of  youth, 
over  all  that  wasted  flower  of  Hfe,  and  afterward  he 
understood  the  agony  hidden  in  little  homes  in  mean 
streets — ^the  homes  of  the  people  he  knows  best — and 
all  his  passion  burned  in  him,  consuming  him  with  rage 
and  bitterness,  because  of  the  misery  of  broken  manhood 
and  womanhood  caused  by  the  brutal  sacrificial  cruelty 
of  war — of  that  war  which  in  his  soul  he  believed  was 
forced  upon  the  world  not  only  by  the  Germans,  but  by 
evil  forces  of  greed  and  corruption  in  high  places  on 
both  sides  of  the  fighting  line,  using  the  spirit  and 
bodies  of  humble  folk,  spellbound  by  false  watchwords, 
as  the  counters  in  this  game  of  deVils. 

A  most  humorous  ironical  man,  in  spite  of  his  sense 
of  tragedy,  I  remember  his  comical  grimaces  in  strange 

72 


IDEALS  OF  THE  HUMANISTS 

places  of  the  war,  as  when,  through  a  snowstorm,  we 
came  out  of  the  shattered  village  of  Kemmel  in  Flanders 
— ^where  the  old  dead  in  the  little  cemetery  had  been 
torn  out  of  their  coffins  by  shell  fire — and  passed  a 
civiUan  in  evening  dress  without  an  overcoat,  walking 
quietly  to  this  hunting  ground  of  death.  Tomlinson 
smiled  at  me  most  whimsically,  tapped  his  big  forehead, 
and  said,  with  a  kind  of  joy,  as  though  the  sight  con- 
firmed all  his  convictions:  "Mad!  Mad!  We're  all 
mad!" 

In  the  early  days  of  the  war,  before  he  wore  the 
uniform  of  a  war  correspondent,  he  was  wandering  about 
an  ammunition  dump  close  to  the  lines  in  darkness 
illumined  only  by  flashes  of  shell  fire.  A  Tommy 
stared  at  his  strange  figure  hke  the  Ancient  Mariner 
in  a  cloth  cap,  walked  round  him  three  times,  and  said, 
"Who  the  'ell  are  you?"  "I'm  the  representative  of 
the  Times,"  said  the  delectable  Tomlinson,  modestly 
and  hiding  the  awful  fact  that  he  was  also  represent- 
ing the  Daily  News.  "Yus,  bloody  Hkely!"  said  the 
gunner,  convinced  of  his  capture  of  a  spy.  "You  come 
along  with  me. "  And  indeed  nothing  could  have  been 
more  unlikely  than  that  Tomlinson  should  be  the 
representative  of  the  Times,  or  that  any  civilian  soul 
should  be  about  an  ammunition  dump  at  midnight 
under  shell  fire. 

Deaf  in  one  ear,  he  had  the  advantage  of  that  on  the 
battlefields,  and  when,  outside  Bapaume,  a  monstrous 
shell  came  screaming,  he  cocked  his  head  on  one  side 
and  asked,  very  simply,  "What  bird  is  that?"  But  the 
best  memory  I  have  of  Tomlinson  is  when  with  quiet 
ardor  he  converted  a  typical  British  general  to  a 
tolerance  of  socialistic  ideals.  .  .  .  The  general  after- 
ward lost  his  job,  undermined  perhaps  by  this  phi- 
losophy. 

And  now  Tomlinson  is  among  the  idealists,  trying  to 
<5  73 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

argue  the  world  to  sanity  and  stinging  stupidity  with 
whips  of  irony. 

VIII 

These  men  whom  I  have  taken  haphazard  as  types 
of  intellectual  leadership  in  the  world  after  war  are  all 
members  of  groups  thinking,  talking,  writing,  organizing, 
and  each  group  and  every  individual  in  each  group  is 
backed  up  by  friendship  and  correspondence  with 
other  minds  in  England,  and  through  Europe,  of  the 
same  sympathies  and  ethical  outlook.  It  is  to  some 
extent  a  secret  confraternity  whose  members  know  one 
another  not  by  any  badge  of  membership  or  by  fellow- 
ship of  political  parties,  clubs,  and  committees,  but  by 
the  exchange  of  a  smile,  an  ironical  hfting  of  eyebrows, 
a  quiet  comment  on  some  new  act  of  government,  a 
new  tyranny  of  reactionary  powers,  another  stupidity 
of  passion  thwarting  the  reconciliation  and  peace  of 
people.  They  meet,  as  I  meet  them,  in  railways  trains 
on  the  Continent,  in  wine  taverns  and  tea  shops,  in 
newspaper  offices,  in  apartment  houses  of  New  York 
and  Washington  and  Paris,  and  in  London  drawing- 
rooms  after  dinner,  where  little  groups  gather  for  con- 
versation, as  once  before  the  Revolution  in  France  the 
Intellectuals  came  to  the  salons  to  discuss  the  existence 
of  God  and  the  social  origins  of  humanity.  All  over 
the  world  now,  as  far  as  I  know  it,  such  groups  of  men 
and  women  are  talking,  talking,  in  very  much  the  same 
way,  with  the  same  doubtfulness  about  the  future  of 
civilization  and  a  faith  in  certain  ethical  remedies  which 
they  think  alone  may  save  us. 

In  an  apartment  house  of  Washington,  where  one  lady 
and  five  men  sat  curled  up  in  easy  chairs,  smoking  ciga- 
rettes, sipping  the  last  drops  of  some  precious  liquid, 
discussing  the  present  troubles  of  Europe  and  the  way 
of  escape,  I  thought  then,  with  an  uncanny  sense  of  the 

74 


IDEALS  OF  THE  HUMANISTS 

intellectual  communion  of  human  thought,  of  all  the 
millions  of  such  little  companies  who  then,  at  that  hour, 
in  poor  rooms  or  splendid  rooms,  were  talking  in  the 
same  strain,  reaching  out  to  the  same  hopes,  relapsing 
perhaps  into  the  same  melancholy.  One  brain  among 
us  dominated  the  general  discussion,  the  cold,  analytical 
brain  of  Frank  Simonds,  one  of  the  greatest  journalists 
in  the  world,  who  did  not  sit  back,  like  the  others,  in 
an  easy  chair,  but  at  a  desk,  alert  and  keen.  He  sorted 
out  the  intellectual  actions  and  reactions  of  the  United 
States,  England,  France,  and  central  Europe,  as  a 
chemist  analyzing  some  compound.  He  balanced  the 
credit  and  debit  side  of  European  economy,  finding  all 
in  a  bankrupt  state.  He  examined  the  claim  of  the 
Allies  to  German  reparation  and  dismissed  them  as 
impossible  by  the  laws  of  arithmetic,  and  then  weighed 
the  advantage  against  the  disadvantage  of  a  strong 
Germany  undermining  the  trade  of  the  world  by  enor- 
mous exports,  by  which  alone  she  could  pay  the  money 
demanded,  and  a  weak,  dismembered  Germany,  ruining 
the  world  by  lack  of  power  to  trade  at  all,  to  buy  raw 
material,  to  send  back  manufactured  goods.  He 
sketched  out  the  inevitable  policy  of  France,  keener  to 
kill  Germany  than  to  save  herself,  discovering  that  by 
no  freak  of  luck  could  she  get  back  the  price  of  all  her 
losses  so  that  her  next  chance  of  satisfaction  lay  in 
thrusting  Germany  deep  into  the  mire,  though  all 
Europe  would  slip  after  her  into  the  bog  of  ruin.  His 
eyes  bright  with  intellectual  vision,  his  shrill,  discordant 
voice  rising  into  ironical  laughter  whenever  sentiment 
tried  to  challenge  his  realism,  leaving  no  loophole  which 
could  trip  him  up  in  argument,  he  prophesied  the  doom 
of  Europe.  A  doom  inevitable,  except  through  one 
door  of  escape,  and  that  a  quicker  abandonment  of 
national  egotism,  a  fellowship  of  nations,  tearing  down 
thdr  trade  barriers,  demobilizing  old  hatreds  and  stand- 

75 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

ing  armies,  forgiving  one  another's   debts,  exchanging 
their  fruits  of  industry  on  terms  of  free  trade. 

It  was  the  same  conclusion  reached  by  a  Hungarian 
who  came  to  see  me  in  London.  "Europe,"  he  said, 
after  terrible  tales  of  misery  in  the  old  Austrian  Empire, 
"is  utterly  doomed  unless  we  abandon  the  old  super- 
stitions of  hatred,  wash  out  the  indemnities  of  war, 
and  start  afresh  on  a  new  phase  of  economic  union 
among  the  countries  of  Europe.  But  there  are  too 
many  fools  about.  We  ought  to  start  an  International 
Society  for  the  Suppression  of  Imbeciles!"  He  laughed 
when  I  told  him  that  so  many  of  us  might  be  disquahfied. 

IX 

It  was  in  the  Lotos  Club  of  New  York  that  I  listened 
to  one  of  the  great  leaders  of  the  world,  one  of  the 
great  doctors  of  humanity,  when  Herbert  C.  Hoover 
sat  in  my  bedroom  and  talked  of  the  things  he  had  seen 
and  done  and  failed  to  do  for  stricken  people.  That 
was  in  March  of  192 1,  just  before  his  appointment  under 
the  new  President,  Harding. 

My  room  was  littered  with  shirts  and  collars,  dis- 
ordered clothes,  opened  and  unopened  letters,  for  I 
had  had  no  long  warning  of  his  coming,  and  no  time 
(after  a  long  journey)  for  tidiness.  He  paid  no  heed 
to  that,  but  for  a  hour  and  a  half  sat  in  a  big  armchair, 
talking  moodily,  almost  introspectively,  with  a  look 
of  sadness,  except  just  now  an^  then,  when  a  glint  of 
humor  sparkled  in  his  eyes  for  a  second  and  then  died 
out  again.  He  is  a  square-built  man,  with  a  puggy, 
clean-shaven  face,  broad  forehead  and  brown  eyes, 
and  has  the  simplicity  of  a  peasant  and  the  brain  of  a 
scientist  who  sees  the  problems  of  life  without  passion, 
without  preconceived  ideas,  without  sentiment,  but  in 
its  essential  truth. 

76 


IDEALS  OF  THE  HUMANISTS 

He  spoke  of  the  state  of  Europe.  The  condition  of 
Austria,  he  said,  was  worse  now  than  a  year  ago,  fed 
by  charity  which  he  was  still  organizing  in  America, 
but  not  being  healed  of  its  social  disease,  for  charity 
could  do  no  real  good,  though  it  was  a  duty  to  do  what 
it  could  in  rescuing.  He  described  his  own  work  after 
the  armistice  as  a  kind  of  economic  dictator,  a  position 
of  which  he  was  glad  to  get  **quit." 

America  had  "pulled  out"  after  spending  a  billion 
and  a  half  dollars  upon  the  relief  of  the  stricken  coun- 
tries, and  for  a  time  he  had  organized  a  system  of  credits 
and  supplies  which  had  helped  to  keep  central  Europe 
from  certain  starvation.  But  he  could  do  nothing 
with  European  statesmen.  They  would  agree  on  a 
reasonable  conclusion  when  assembled  round  a  table, 
and  then  go  away  and  do  nothing  to  carry  out  the  idea 
— do  everything  to  thwart  it.  All  the  new  states  got 
busy  putting  up  frontiers  against  one  another,  with 
customs  dues  and  all  kinds  of  barriers  to  free  intercourse 
and  exchange. 

The  Poles  would  not  help  themselves,  and  endless 
intrigue  prevented  recovery  and  health.  From  the 
Poles  in  America  lOO  million  dollars  had  been  sent  to 
committees,  and  if  that  money  had  been  used  as  credit 
for  food  supplies,  the  starving  population  would  have 
been  well  nourished;  but  the  money  was  passed  through 
clearing  houses  of  London  and  Paris  so  that  Poland 
received  perfumes,  soaps,  luxuries  for  her  profiteers, 
instead  of  food  for  her  people. 

In  Serbia  there  was  an  immense  store  of  surplus  food 
which  would  have  been  easy  of  transport  to  the  stricken 
populations  of  central  Europe.  But  Serbia  would  not 
sell  it  eastward.  She  sought  higher  profits  and  sent 
it  to  Italy,  France,  and  England,  while  food  for  her 
neighbors  had  to  be  sent  all  the  way  from  America  to 
keep  them  alive. 

77 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

"Europe  must  unite  on  economic  lines  or  perish," 
said  Hoover,  and  he  did  not  speak  hghtly  nor  use  care- 
less phrases.  Those  words  on  his  lips  were  a  sentence 
of  death,  if  Europe  did  not  heed  his  warning. 

I  spoke  to  him  of  my  hope  in  a  new  leadership,  and  in 
the  coming  of  youth,  and  he  smiled  when  he  answered 
and  said:  "Youth  is  busy  re-electing  the  old  men. 
If  Briand  goes,  he  will  be  followed  by  Poincare  into 
deeper  reaction."  He  had  seen  no  signs  of  a  new 
faith  in  the  League  of  Nations,  but  only  the  old  men 
burking  the  real  issues  and  playing  with  truth. 

Then  he  turned  his  thoughts  to  America  and  told 
me  the  tremendous  difficulty  of  moving  American  imagi- 
nation in  the  direction  of  a  world  policy.  The  size  of 
America,  the  provincial  character  of  the  American 
mind  in  the  great  Middle  West  and  over  the  whole 
continent,  makes  them  incapable  of  understanding 
how  they  are  touched  by  disease  in  central  Europe. 
He  had  tried  to  make  them  understand.  When  farm- 
ers of  the  Middle  West  had  asked  him:  "What  is 
Europe  to  us?  Why  is  the  price  of  hogs  dropping 
down?"  he  had  told  them  that  before  the  war  each 
individual  German  had  obtained  25  grams  of  fat  per 
day  (if  I  remember  the  figures),  which  was  not  enough 
even  then  for  the  mass  of  industrial  workers,  and  now 
they  obtained  only  12  grams  of  fat.  The  price  of 
hogs  in  the  Middle  West  depends  on  the  German  stand- 
ard of  fat  supply.  .  .  .  But  th^y  could  not  understand 
and  do  not  remember. 

Hoover  hoped  that  President  Harding  would  call  a 
World  council  and  help  to  build  up  a  new  economic 
union  in  Europe  and  cause  a  plea  for  gradual  and  gen- 
eral disarmament.  But  he  feared  that  if  he  did  so  the 
old  diplomats  of  Europe  would  come  to  thwart  it  with 
their  old  animosities  and  subtleties  and  national  in- 
trigues.    Yet  he  hoped.  ...  It  was  because  he  hoped 

78 


IDEALS  OF  THE  HUMANISTS 

In  a  growing  common  sense,  in  the  promise  of  youth, 
in  the  spreading  of  truth,  that  he  went  on  working, 
instead  of  retiring  to  a  private  yacht  in  some  sun- 
soaked  sea,  abandoning  the  world  to  its  doom.  .  .  . 
He  saw  just  a  gUmmer  of  hght  ahead. 


I  perceived  among  all  these  individuals  and  all  these 
groups,  clubs,  committees,  and  associations  of  Intellec- 
tuals in  Europe  and  America,  certain  clear,  definite,  and 
simple  ideas,  however  vaguely  or  subtly  expressed, 
however  complicated  by  social  and  ethical  philosophy. 
They  amount  just  to  this:  That  the  war  was  a  homi- 
cidal insanity  which  exhausted  all  the  reserves  of  wealth 
in  Europe,  and  left  such  burdens  of  debt  that  they  will 
never  be  redeemed.  That,  in  spite  of  great  human 
heroism  on  all  sides,  it  left  human  nature  in  Europe 
demoralized  and  spiritually  weakened.  That  the 
arrangement  of  peace  ignored  the  devastating  effects  of 
war  in  all  nations  and  the  complete  upheaval  of  its 
economic  machinery,  and  created  new  boundaries, 
burdens,  and  rivalries  which  can  only  be  maintained 
until  another  explosion  happens,  more  monstrous  than 
the  last  and  destructive  of  white  civiUzation  as  we 
know  it  and  Hke  it. 

What  way  out,  then?  What  escape  from  this  ap- 
proaching doom,  whose  shadow  creeps  over  the  souls  of 
men  ?  Not  by  diplomatic  conferences  of  the  old  school, 
establishing  some  new  balance  of  power,  not  by  one 
nation  grabbing  at  the  last  reserves  of  another,  not  by 
military  occupation  of  defaulting  countries,  nor  finan- 
cial juggUngs  to  postpone  an  evil  day  of  reckoning  in 
this  nation  or  that,  nor  by  assaults  on  Capital  by  Labor 
or  attacks  on  Labor  by  Capital,  but  rather  by  a  com- 
plete change  in  the  structure  of  civilization  and  in  the 

79 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

hearts  of  peoples.  Under  the  impending  menace  of 
general  ruin  they  believe  that  humanity  in  Europe  may 
be  inspired  to  make  a  clean  jump  across  the  abyss  that 
opens  before  them,  instead  of  crawling  slowly  to  it 
and  falling  in.  It  must  be  a  jump  to  a  new  world  in 
which  there  must  be  utter  abandonment  of  the  herit- 
age of  national  hatred  and  superstitions,  spell  words 
and  fetishes.  The  idealists  demand  a  new  religion  of 
humanity  based  not  upon  force,  but  upon  spiritual 
comradeship  among  common  folk.  They  preach  not  a 
revolution  by  blood,  but  a  revolution  by  love.  They 
believe  in  love  of  country — ^the  love  of  the  beauty  of 
one's  countryside,  of  one's  speech,  of  one's  poetry — 
but  not  in  the  hatred  of  other  people  whose  speech  is 
different,  though  their  beauty  is  as  ours.  They  believe 
in  the  liberty  of  nations,  but  in  a  communion  of  inter- 
national peoples,  not  denying  one  another's  liberty, 
rather  protecting  it,  because  of  common  interests, 
sympathies,  and  understandings  across  the  present 
frontiers.  Their  hope  in  a  possible  cessation  of  war  is 
founded  upon  their  faith  in  the  common  sense  of  human- 
ity, if  it  can  be  liberated  from  superstitions,  and  the 
baser  ignorance  in  which  it  is  kept  by  artful  brains,  now 
that  frightful  experience  has  taught  them  the  lesson 
of  its  folly.  They  admit  the  passions  and  cruelties 
and  greeds  still  inherent  in  the  heart  of  man,  but  they 
have  a  wonderful  optimism  in  the  power  of  ideals  and  the 
average  virtue  of  common  folk.  .  .  . 

Unpractical  visionaries!  Dreamers  out  of  touch  with 
reality!  Sentimentalists  regardless  of  plain  facts!  Rev- 
olutionists with  rose  water!  "Intellectuals"  playing 
with  the  fires  which  will  consume  them  when  the  pas- 
sion of  brutality,  brutal  life  itself,  makes  an  auto  da  fe 
of  such  weaklings.  So  the  brutal  mind,  sure  of  history, 
with  no  faith  but  in  force,  gibes  at  them. 

Gibe  for  gibe,  the  Intellectuals  can  hold  their  own. 

80 


IDEALS  OF  THE  HUMANISTS 

With  witty  poniard  they  can  stick  the  bull  fellow  who 
rages  at  them.  They  know  they  will  never  live  to  see 
the  fulfillment  of  their  hopes,  nor  any  quick  harvest 
come  from  the  seeds  they  sow.  In  secret  hours  they 
despair  because  of  so  much  stupidity.  Often  they  face 
the  futility  of  their  ideahsm.  Many  times  they  mock 
at  their  own  little  prescriptions  for  a  world  disease,  and 
stare  moodily  at  the  approach  of  a  greater  downfall  in 
which  all  Europe  will  be  engulfed.  Yet  they  go  on 
talking,  writing,  trying  to  Hnk  up  with  one  another,  and 
to  leaven  a  mass  of  ignorance,  attacking  tyranny  in  its 
strongholds,  brutality  everywhere,  cruelty  which  hurts 
them  more  than  its  victims,  teaching  beauty,  liberty 
of  thought,  large  toleration,  the  right  of  humanity  to 
joy  and  peace.  Of  another  world  beyond  the  grave 
they  have  no  definite  belief — not  many  of  them.  God 
means  mostly  to  them  the  ideal  love  in  the  minds  of 
men.  They  are  humanists  with  their  eyes  on  the  pur- 
pose and  the  agony  and  the  compensations  of  this  life 
of  men  and  women.  Perhaps  if  they  claimed  religious 
authority,  spoke  as  men  ordained  by  a  Divine  Spirit, 
they  would  get  a  greater  following,  and  lead  the  world 
forward  on  the  impulse  of  some  new  religious  fervor. 
But  this  would  alter  all  their  character.  It  would  rob 
them  of  irony,  of  self-mockery.  They  would  no  longer 
have  a  tolerant  understanding  of  human  weakness, 
an  indifference  to  the  smaller  frailties,  a  delicate  sense 
of  humor.  They  are  not  priests,  prophets,  or  fanat- 
ics, but  humanists.  It  is  doubtful  if  many  of  them  are 
of  the  stuff"  of  martyrs,  though  I  think  Tomlinson  would 
die  with  a  whimsical  melancholy  on  behalf  of  the  truth 
as  he  sees  it,  and  others,  like  Nevinson,  are  careless  of 
death. 

They  are  not  of  much  power  in  the  world.  There  are 
other  forces  moving  secretly,  stirring  in  the  psychology 
of  peoples,  working  in  subconscious  evolutionary  ways 

8i 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

toward  some  great  change  in  our  social  state.  But 
they  have  some  little  measure  of  influence  on  the  acts 
and  thoughts  of  peoples,  and  if  they  could  get  closer  to 
their  kind  in  all  countries,  in  more  intimate  association 
inspired  by  great  leadership,  they  might  lift  Europe 
out  of  its  present  morass  to  a  cleaner  and  brighter  height 
of  human  progress. 


I 

III 


Ill 

THE    NEED    OF   THE    SPIRIT 


TTHE  spiritual  fires  of  white  civilization  seem  to  have 
•■•  burnt  low  since  the  war.  •  In  many  countries  they 
seem  to  have  flickered  out,  leaving  nothing  but  the  dead 
ash  of  a  hard  materialism  or  the  red  embers  of  selfish 
passion — nowhere  very  visible  the  white  light  of  the 
sacrificial  flame. 

Many  simple  souls  were  startled  by  the  rapid  decline 
in  ordinary  morality  which  happened  in  war  time,  still 
more  by  the  manifest  lowering  of  spiritual  ideals  after 
the  armistice  among  those  who  had  seemed  exalted  to 
wonderful  heights  of  self-sacrifice  and  spiritual  purpose. 
They  could  not  understand — it  was  hard  to  understand 
— how  men  who  had  been  so  obedient  to  discipline  in 
the  face  of  death,  so  reckless  of  their  own  lives  and 
self-interest  for  their  country's  sake,  should  come 
home  with  sordid,  squalid  instincts,  hating  work, 
desiring  nothing  but  material  pleasure,  striking,  some- 
times rioting,  in  senseless  conflicts  between  Capital  and 
Labor,  rebelling  against  authority,  demanding  the 
fleshpots  of  life  with  hungry  appetite.  Still  less  could 
they  understand — those  aloof,  observing  souls — how  the 
w^ar,  which  seemed  to  lift  up  human  nature  by  the  enor- 
mous enthusiasm  of  patriotism,  could  be  followed  by  so 
many  revelations  of  widespread  immorality,  general 
laxity  of  relationship  between  men  and  women,  and 
distressing  signs  of  a  coarseness  and  cruelty  of  mind — 

83 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

in  all  classes — not  noticeable  before  the  war.  Minis- 
ters of  religion  are  aghast  at  the  materialism  of  the  times, 
and  cry  out  in  horror  from  their  pulpits,  not  acknowledg- 
ing their  own  share  of  guilt.  Newspaper  morahsts 
record  each  new  aspect  of  social  degeneracy,  forgetting 
that  the  press  which  pays  them  is  in  a  great  measure 
the  malign  influence  producing  this  mental  condition 
of  mass  psychology. 

The  fundamental  mistake  of  those  now  surprised  by 
the  sudden  "slump"  in  idealism  is  that  the  war  was 
really  a  time  of  spiritual  exaltation  to  all  the  people 
engaged  in  its  passionate  drama.  To  many  it  was. 
To  many  young  men  about  to  die  for  their  country's 
sake,  in  the  early  days  at  least,  it  was  a  time  of  divine 
renunciation  of  earthly  hopes,  as  one  sees  in  the  poems 
of  Rupert  Brooks  and  in  the  letters  of  thousands  of 
boys  to  thousands  of  mothers.  So  also  among  the 
civilian  peoples  behind  the  lines  there  was  a  great  stir- 
ring of  spiritual  faith  in  the  excitement  of  unaccustomed 
service  and  sacrifice  for  their  country's  sake.  The 
love  of  their  fighting  men  was  a  great  love,  and  that  was 
good.  They  were  iready  to  deny  themselves  everything 
so  that  "the  boys"  might  have  an  extra  touch  of  com- 
fort, some  proof  of  love  in  their  ordeal.  They  were 
ready  to  suffer  privation,  danger  of  air  raids,  the  nervous 
rack  of  war  time,  not  only  for  the  sake  of  their  youth 
in  the  fields  of  battle,  but  for  the  sake  of  the  victory  of 
ideals  over  the  forces  of  evil.  They  were  simple,  clear- 
cut  ideals  in  simple  minds.  Right  over  wrong,  liberty 
over  tyranny,  and  the  safety  of  the  mother  country — 
or  of  the  fatherland!  Nothing  can  ever  lessen  the 
miracle  of  all  that,  at  its  best,  in  its  purest  nobility. 

Alas  for  the  frailty  of  human  nature,  there  were  other 
strains  of  emotion,  not  pure  or  noble,  in  the  deep  tides 
and  currents  of  war  enthusiasm.  All  passions  were 
intensified  in  that  time,  evil  as  well  as  good,  low  as  well 

84 


THE  NEED  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

as  high.  The  love  of  country  and  of  young  kinsmen 
was  horribly  blended  with  hatred  and  blood  lust  in 
the  minds  of  many  men,  and  more  women,  in  whom 
the  emotion  of  hate  had  a  degrading  and  coarsening 
action.  It  was  inflamed  and  kept  at  fever  heat  by 
atrocity  stories — many  of  them  false — and  by  a  long, 
careful  propaganda  of  hate,  not  ending  with  the  end 
of  the  war,  but  continuing  long  after  peace.  It  was  the 
press  (sometimes  the  pulpit)  which  stirred  up  and  poked 
about  the  lowest  instincts  of  the  mob  mind,  with  appeals 
to  vengeance,  cupidity,  cruelty.  That  is  not  good 
food  for  the  soul  for  seven  years.  It  has  a  poisonous 
reaction,  and  deadens  the  sensitive  nerve  cells  of  the 
mind. 

In  England  after  the  war  I  have  been  astonished  often 
by  the  insensitive  quality  of  the  popular  mind  to  events 
which  formerly  would  have  aroused  instant  emotion, 
of  indignation  or  pity.  Horrible  accounts  of  the  star- 
vation of  children  in  central  Europe,  narratives  of 
whole  populations,  as  in  Vienna,  striken  by  disease 
for  lack  of  fats,  did  not  touch  the  imagination  of  many 
people.  Others  reacted  to  such  stories  with  harsh 
hostility.  "Let  them  die!"  was  the  answer  I  had  from 
ladies  I  know.  "Why  should  we  feed  boy  babies  who 
will  grow  up  to  be  Huns.?"  That  was  logical  in  its 
cruelty  and  perfectly  reasonable,  if  life  is  to  be  based  on 
the  law  of  cruelty  and  human  nature  to  be  divided 
always  between  "Huns"  and  "Allies."  But  it  was 
new  in  modern  England  that  women — not  all,  of  course, 
but  quite  a  lot  of  them — should  be  so  callous  of  suffering 
childhood,  even  in  the  enemy's  country. 

More  surprising,  more  callous,  was  the  indifference  of 
the  mass  of  English  people  to  the  reign  of  terror  in 
Ireland.  It  was  not  that  they  hated  the  Sinn  Feiners, 
or  upheld  the  policy  of  reprisals  by  the  Black-and-Tans. 
Theoretically  the    ranks    of    labor  were    sympathetic 

85 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

to  the  Irish  rebels  and  hostile  to  the  government's 
policy  of  coercion.  Actually  they  did  not  care.  The 
dreadful  episodes  of  that  struggle,  ambushes  and  arson, 
assassinations  by  this  side  and  the  other,  men  dragged 
out  of  their  beds  and  shot  before  their  wives  and  chil- 
dren, the  hanging  of  boys  in  batches,  all  that  horror 
of  guerrilla  warfare  and  military  repression,  left  English 
psychology  stone-cold  or  just  mildly  interested.  Before 
the  war  a  storm  of  passion  would  have  swept  over 
England.  There  would  have  been  a  fierce  partisanship, 
wild  meetings,  passionate  protests,  mob  demonstrations. 
After  the  war  only  small  groups  of  "intellectuals" 
excited  themselves  about  the  state  of  Ireland.  In  the 
streets  I  used  to  read  newspaper  placards  with  a  sense 
of  sickness — "Cork  in  Flames" — "British  Soldiers  Am- 
bushed near  Dublin" — "Five  More  Policemen  Shot  in 
Ireland" — "Extensive  Raids  in  Irish  Towns" — "More 
Creameries  Destroyed  by  Crown  Forces."  But  the 
crowds  went  by,  indifferent,  in  the  Strand.  No  flame 
of  indignation  lit  up  their  lackluster  eyes.  Ireland 
might  be  swept  clean  by  fire  and  sword,  for  all  they 
cared.  Some  filthy  divorce  case,  the  legal  argument  as 
to  whether  an  archdeacon  stayed  at  a  hotel  with  an 
unknown  lady,  and  always  the  latest  betting  results, 
were  of  far  more  importance  in  the  mind  of  the  people. 
The  murder  of  a  girl  at  the  seaside  by  two  degenerate 
young  soldiers  filled  columns  of  the  daily  papers  and  the 
reports  were  read  eagerly  by  miUions.  It  was  the  sex 
interest  which  lured  them  and  made  those  dull  eyes  light 
up.  The  killing  of  women  in  Ireland  by  British  soldiers 
"shooting  up"  Irish  villages  did  not  raise  a  flicker  of 
interest  among  the  general  public  in  England,  nor 
command  more  than  a  few  paragraphs  in  English  papers. 
Enormous  calamities,  like  the  great  famine  in  China, 
did  not  arouse  one  throb  of  emotion,  one  pitiful  tear,  as 
far  as  I  could  find,  among  English  folk,  and  I  was,  like 

86 


THE  NEED  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

them,  unable  to  respond  emotionally  to  the  most  tragic 
happenings,  unless  they  were  of  immediate  personal 
interest.  The  immense  long-continued  tragedy  of  war 
had  destroyed  all  power  of  emotional  reaction  to  new 
and  more  remote  abominations.  "Oh,  hell!"  was  the 
attitude  of  mind  of  the  average  man  to  any  such  epi- 
sode. A  subtle  coarsening  process  had  overtaken  the 
most  refined  minds  and  blunted  their  finer  sensibilities. 
The  least  refined  minds  had  just  relapsed  into  brutish- 
ness,  no  longer  held  up  to  decency  by  the  ethical  stand- 
ard of  the  world. 

II 

For  some  time  after  the  demobilization  of  the  armies 
civilian  populations  were  astonished  and  shocked  by  the 
disorderly  conduct  of  many  home-coming  soldiers. 
Indeed,  signs  of  trouble  appeared  immediately  after  the 
armistice,  and  the  very  men  who  had  done  their  best  to 
win  the  war,  which  was  won,  suddenly  adopted  an  atti- 
tude of  revolt  against  all  discipline.  On  the  western 
front  there  were  disorderly  demonstrations  by  bodies 
of  men  demanding  instant  demobilization  and  insulting 
elderly  officers  who  threatened  them  with  field  punish- 
ment. To  Whitehall  and  the  War  Office — ^the  very 
Holy  of  Holies — came  troops  of  soldiers  from  seaside 
camps  in  lorries  and  ambulances  seized  without  per- 
mission. They  demanded  instant  hearing  from  any 
general  in  authority.  They  were  not  to  be  awed  by 
red  tabs  or  brass  hats.  The  power  of  life  and  death 
seemed  to  have  gone  out  of  those  symbols  of  command, 
to  the  profound  annoyance  of  those  who  wore  them. 
"The  men  have  been  infected  with  Bolshevism.  Foreign 
agents  have  been  at  work  among  'em,"  were  words 
spoken  in  a  frightened  way  by  elderly  gentlemen  in 
London  clubs.  "  I  'd  turn  the  machine  guns  on  to  them," 
was  the  advice  of  others  who,  not  long  before,  had  been 

87 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

acclaiming  those  men  as  heroes  and  the  saviors  of  old 
England.  What  had  happened?  In  another  book — 
Now  It  Can  Be  Told — I  have  shown  a  little  of  what 
had  happened  in  the  spirit  of  the  men  who  had  fought 
— their  disillusionment  with  the  ideals  of  war,  their 
bitterness  with  the  old  men  in  the  high  places  of  com- 
mand, responsible  for  much  unnecessary  slaughter, 
their  sudden  revulsion  against  discipline  when  the  com- 
ing of  peace  seemed  to  break  all  need  of  it,  their  des- 
perate desire  to  get  out  of  khaki  and  into  **civies" 
again,  and  their  utter  sickening  weariness  of  "spit  and 
polish,"  parade,  all  the  deadening  routine  of  military 
life  as  soon  as  the  passionate  purpose  of  the  war  had  gone 
out  of  it.  It  was  not  Bolshevism  that  had  been  at 
work,  but  the  ordinary  actions  and  reactions  of  human 
nature. 

Worse  things  happened  later,  things  not  so  natural 
or  pardonable  as  the  haste  of  men  to  be  demobilized, 
though  partly  due  to  the  fret  ^f  waiting  for  freedom. 
Soldiers — and  especially  Canadian  soldiers — ran  amuck 
in  camps  and  towns,  attacked  poHce,  looted  shops, 
stormed  town  halls,  fought  in  a  brutal,  demoniacal  way 
with  the  guardians  of  law  and  order.  There  was  some- 
thing unreasonable  in  these  sudden  gusts  of  fury,  some- 
thing that  looked  like  madness,  as  in  the  case  of  young 
officers  even  who  took  part  in  these  affrays  and  after- 
ward swore,  as  I  think  sincerely,  that  they  could  re- 
member nothing  of  how  they  came  to  be  mixed  up  in 
the  rioting,  or  what  they  had  done.  It  was  just  a  sud- 
den lack  of  self-control,  a  sudden  uprising  of  ungov- 
ernable and  unreasoning  passion. 

It  was  part  of  that  general  disease  which  doctors  called 
"shell  shock,"  though  it  afflicted  men  and  women  far 
behind  the  lines,  aloof  from  shell  fire,  the  long  nagging 
of  the  war  upon  the  nervous  system  until  it  was  all 
worn  and  frayed,  the  high  tension  of  war  excitement 

88 


THE  NEED  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

which  suddenly  snapped  when  the  armistice  was  signed, 
and  the  subconscious  effect  of  war's  Hberating  influences 
upon  the  animal  and  moral  restraints  of  civilized  nature. 
The  killing  of  men  had  been  the  work  of  life,  the  purpose 
of  hfe,  for  four  and  a  half  years.  To  the  gentle  lady 
knitting  comforters  for  the  Red  Cross  that  purpose  had 
been  a  subconscious  influence.  She  was  aware  of 
death  in  the  mass,  the  slaughter  of  the  world's  youth, 
the  blood  and  iron  of  war.  Her  gentility  had  been  a 
little  hardened.  She  was  no  longer  shrinking  and  sen- 
sitive at  the  thought  of  life's  brutality.  Even  she, 
with  her  taper  fingers,  had  lost  something  of  refinement. 
How  much  more  the  man  who  had  walked  through 
fields  of  dead,  whose  daily  training  was  to  kill  better,  who 
had  killed!  The  miracle  is  that  so  many  thousands  of 
decent  men — so  many  millions — remained  decent,  un- 
tainted by  blood  lust,  clean  in  mind  and  heart.  It 
was  inevitable  that  others  should  be  brutalized,  and  that 
when,  after  the  war,  some  accidental  happening  stirred 
their  anger,  or  their  lust,  they  behaved  like  primitive 
men.  They  had  been  taught  "caveman  stuff,"  as  the 
Americans  call  it,  while  they  sat  in  lousy  dugouts 
under  fire.  There  was  an  epidemic  of  foul  crime  in 
England,  France,  Italy,  other  countries.  Young  soldiers 
murdered  lonely  girls  after  horrible  brutality.  In 
drunken  brawls  they  fought  one  another  like  gorillas.  .  .  . 
During  the  great  coal  strike  in  England,  the  govern- 
ment called  up  the  Reservists  to  maintain  order  in  case 
of  rioting  by  the  miners  and  the  army  of  unemployed. 
For  the  most  part  the  miners  behaved  like  lambs,  but 
at  Aldershot,  Woolwich,  and  other  places  the  Reservists, 
all  "veterans"  of  the  Great  War,  broke  bounds  and 
started  looting  and  rioting  until  they  were  dispersed  by 
cavalry.  "Bolshevism!"  whispered  frightened  politi- 
cians, using  the  new  spell  word  to  explain  every  symp- 
tom of  social  unrest.  But  in  this  case  what  was  happen- 
7  89 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

ing  was  the  disgust  of  men  thrust  back  into  the  discipline 
from  which  they  had  escaped,  after  too  much  of  it 
and  after  they  had  thrown  it  to  the  four  winds  in  the 
Hberty  they  had  found  in  peace.  Some  of  them,  by 
that  sudden  relaxation  of  restraint,  after  a  life  in  which 
every  hour  of  their  day  was  ordered,  had  lapsed  into  a 
weak  lawlessness  of  soul,  incapable  of  self-control, 
nervy,  restless,  lazy  not  of  set  purpose,  but  spiritually 
lax,  and  with  a  mental  and  physical  resentment  to 
concentrated  work.  In  the  mass  psychology  of  peoples 
with  the  war  experience,  there  was  this  loosening  of  old 
restraints,  and  after  the  enormous,  driving  impulses  of 
war,  life  seemed  purposeless  and  without  any  sanc- 
tions for  discipline.  No  new  impluse  higher  than  self- 
interest  replaced  the  spiritual  ideal  of  sacrifice.  The 
mob,  without  leadership*  contemptuous  of  those  who 
claimed  to  be  leaders,  cynical  of  ideahsts  who  had  brought 
the  world  to  a  sorry  pass,  followed  its  own  instincts, 
devoted  itself  to  its  own  immediate  interests,  while 
many  people  lower  than  the  average  of  the  crowd  (whose 
instincts  are  mainly  sound)  just  dropped  back  into  the 
selfishness  of  the  brutes  and  adopted  the  brute  code  as 
their  law  of  life. 


Ill 

One  strange  after-efi'ect  of  war,  startling  the  moralist 
— ^judge  or  jurymen — by  its  devastating  epidemic,  was 
the  ruin  of  homes  by  divorce.  Here  it  seems,  except 
to  fanatics  who  favor  divorce  as  something  good  and 
admirable  in  itself,  is  a  clear  proof  of  degradation  in 
social  morality — the  slippery  slope  to  perdition  in  Chris- 
tian civilization.  I  hate  figures  because  often  they 
confuse  the  mind  instead  of  clearing  it,  but  I  must 
quote  here  the  divorce  statistics  of  England,  which 
truly  show  in  a  dramatic  and  shocking  way  the  feverish 

90 


THE  NEED  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

increase  in  numbers  of  those  who,  in  a  country  still  in- 
stinctively jealous  of  the  marriage  laws,  have  gone  to 
law  to   break  their  partnership. 


Year 


I913 
I914 

I9IS 
I916 

I917 
I918 
I919 
1920 


Dissolution  of  Marriage 

Nullity  of  Marriage 

Husbands' 

Wives ' 

Husbands' 

Wives' 

Petition 

Petition 

Petition 

Petition 

312 

234 

13 

18 

436 

397 

7 

16 

348 

320 

6 

6 

SIS 

421 

II 

7 

641 

30s 

12 

20 

727 

3SS 

IS 

14 

1,216 

413 

10 

15 

2,3Si 

690 

22 

27 

In  1 92 1,  for  which  I  have  not  the  complete  figures, 
the  numbers  mount  higher,  and  in  one  week  at  the 
beginning  of  May  six  hundred  cases  were  heard  in 
the  courts. 

It  will  be  seen  that  in  1920  there  were  over  three 
thousand  divorce  cases,  or  ten  times  as  many  as  in 
the  year  before  the  war.  Yet  it  is  probable  that  that 
number  is  insignificant  in  comparison  with  all  the 
homes  in  which  husbands  and  wives  live  in  miserable 
alliance,  their  spiritual  bond  having  been  utterly  broken, 
though  they  do  not  apply  for  dissolution  of  marriage  for 
lack  of  money  or  in  fear  of  scandal.  It  has  been  a 
world  malady  directly  due  to  the  war  in  many  strange, 
subtle  ways.  "I  do  not  know  one  man  who  went  to 
France  now  living  with  his  wife  again,"  I  was  told  by 
an  American  lady  of  high  social  standing.  I  protested 
against  her  exaggeration,  knowing  many  American 
soldiers  still  happily  married,  and  asked  her  to  think 
again  and  modify  her  statement,  but  she  said:  "I  may 
be  unfortunate  in  my  friends,  but  that  is  actually  my 
experience  of  their  home  life. " 

91 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

How  can  one  account  for  this  tragedy  of  lives?  What 
was  the  influence  of  environment  and  adventure  which 
led  to  such  disloyalty  between  those  who  had  loved  ? 
For  in  many  cases  these  divorces  are  not  revelations  of 
ordinary  immorality  by  men  and  women  of  low  character. 
On  the  contrary,  many  of  them  have  been  brought  before 
the  law  by  people  of  exceptional  culture,  of  good  social 
reputation,  and  of  long-tried  virtue.  Middle-aged  men, 
fathers  of  families,  who  lived  honest  humdrum  lives, 
contented  and  happy  to  all  appearances,  suddenly 
broke  away,  changed  all  their  character,  betrayed 
women  who  had  been  utterly  faithful  to  them.  So 
was  it  with  many  women.  With  younger  couples  it 
is  easier  to  unflerstand.  During  war  time  they  married 
in  haste  and  in  peace  time  repented  at  leisure.  When 
the  menace  of  the  war  was  present,  youth  took  what  it 
could  quickly,  before  death  could  intervene,  grabbed  at 
life  and  immediate  joy.  I  knew  many  boys — airmen 
and  company  officers,  machine  gunners,  and  observ- 
ers— who  knew  that  seven  days'  leave  might  be  their 
last  chance  of  life.  One  more  little  "stunt"  above  the 
clouds,  one  more  little  *'show"  across  No-Man's  Land, 
and  for  them  no  more.  They  loved  life.  Its  beauty 
was  boundless  to  them.  They  felt  their  youth  with 
vital  intensity  of  desire.  To  get  "all  in"  while  they 
had  the  time  was  their  philosophy,  and  marriage  with 
a  pretty  girl  was  part  of  the  life  they  would  not  miss, 
though  it  might  be  only  for  a  splendid  week.  It  was  so 
easy.  The  girls  were  of  the  same  philosophy.  They 
too  were  grabbing  at  life,  seeking  fulfillment  of  youth, 
before  all  the  boys  died.  It  did  not  matter  very  much 
which  boy  they  married.  They  were  all  so  splendid 
and  so  brave.  They  were  life — under  the  menace  of 
death.  .  .  . 

Youth  was  right.  In  the  mass  it  was  wise,  with  sure 
instinct.     Mother    Nature    created    their    impulses    to 

92 


THE  NEED  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

repair  so  much  destruction  of  life.  But  there  were 
penalties.  Life's  little  ironies  broke  in  to  mock  at 
romance.  Many  of  the  boys  did  not  die,  though  the 
odds  were  against  them.  They  came  home,  badly 
or  lightly  wounded,  nerve  shaken,  fretful  with  the 
strange  and  deadly  boredom  of  peace  for  which  they 
had  longed.  They  could  not  get  jobs,  so  many  of  them, 
for  so  long  a  time,  and  after  trudging  for  jobs  came  back 
home  dispirited,  bad-tempered,  quick  to  resent  the  little 
irritations  of  domestic  ways.  Young  wives  were  very 
lonely  in  war,  and  hated  loneliness  and  sought  the 
companionship  of  their  husbands'  friends,  home  on 
leave.  "Allah  is  great,  but  juxtaposition  is  greater." 
Poor  children  of  life,  so  ignorant  of  their  own  quality, 
their  own  emotion,  the  tides  of  human  nature.  Here 
is  nothing  to  marvel  at,  especially  at  a  time  when  all 
laws  of  life  were  being  rudely  challenged,  all  faith  was 
being  questioned,  and  religion  was  irreconcilable  in  many 
souls  with  war's  peculiar  code. 

More  difficult  to  understand  was  the  sudden  break- 
down of  older  men,  not  ignorant  of  their  own  nature, 
and  with  long  records  of  loyalty.  "How  is  it,"  I  was 
asked  by  a  frank-spoken  lady,  "that  men  with  ladies 
as  their  wives,  beautiful  women,  all  the  highest  refine- 
ment of  civilization  in  their  homes,  and  all  the  tradi- 
tion of  training  behind  them,  fell  to  the  first  little  slut 
they  saw  in  the  streets  of  Paris,  or  went  astray  in  low 
haunts  .f*"  It  was  not  quite  so  bad  as  that,  though  it 
was  bad. 

I  explain  such  mysteries  in  a  groping  way.  The  war 
was  a  mighty  aberration  of  all  restraints  built  up  by 
the  careful  checks  and  boundaries  of  the  civilized  code, 
that  powerful  system,  stronger  than  religion,  which 
we  know  as  Public  Opinion.  Human  nature  is  always 
secretly  in  revolt  against  these  checks.  There  is  an 
errant  libertism  in  the  soul  of  every  man  who  sees  en- 

93 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

ticing  byways  of  pleasure,  deductive  short  cuts  to  joy, 
across  which  is  written  the  harsh  word  of  the  social 
law,  "No  Thoroughfare."  Everywhere  through  the 
quiet  hfe  of  peace  in  quiet  towns,  these  signboards  are 
staring  in  the  sight  of  men,  and  because  of  the  watchful 
eyes  of  Public  Opinion  they  dare  not  trespass.  But 
war  flung  all  these  signboards  down.  Public  Opinion 
altered  its  own  bearings.  Its  fixed  principles  shpped. 
In  the  convulsion  of  war  it  lost  its  faith.  Men  went 
out  to  France  or  other  fronts  in  an  adventure  which 
changed  all  life  and  themselves  utterly.  It  had  no 
hnk  with  the  past,  and  its  future  was  most  uncertain. 
These  men  in  khaki  uniforms  were  mDt  the  same  men 
as  those  who  had  been  in  civil  clothes,  with  white 
collars  and  cuffs  and  all,  in  city  offices  or  pleasant 
drawing-rooms.  They  were  in  a  different  world  and  a 
different  life,  doing  things  utterly  rem.ote  from  all 
their  previous  experience,  and  for  the  most  part  skep- 
tical of  ever  returning  to  the  life  they  had  known. 
They  were  revitalized.  The  old  trammels  fell  from 
them.  They  were  but  soldiers  of  fortune  in  an  un- 
ending war.  They,  too,  had  to  grab  quickly  at  any 
passing  chance  of  pleasure,  lest  they  should  be  too 
late.  And  the  job  they  had  to  do  was  ugly,  dirty, 
cruel.  It  would  end,  perhaps,  in  a  dirty  kind  of 
death.  Once  up  in  the  trenches  and  they  would  be 
far  from  any  kind  of  life's  beauty.  Behind  the  lines, 
in  Paris,  Amiens,  London,  there  was  still  beauty, 
feminine  softness,  which  was  the  opposite  of  all  that 
harshness  of  war's  discipline.  The  rustle  of  silk  sounded 
better  than  the  scream  of  a  shell.  They  were  not  dis- 
loyal to  their  wives  at  home.  They  were  other  men 
in  another  world — born  anew.  So  they  argued,  and 
wondered  at  themselves. 

After  the  war  they  were  different  again.     When  they 
went  home  they  pretended  they  were  the  same.     They 

94 


I 


THE  NEED  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

dressed  up  in  the  same  old  clothes,  sat  at  the  same  old 
table,  and  knew,  so  many  of  them,  that  the  men  they 
pretended  to  be  were  dead  and  that  they  were  mas- 
queraders  of  their  own  ghosts.  The  woman  opposite 
was  no  longer  the  wife  of  this  man  who  sat  glancing  at 
her  now  and  then  with  searching  eyes.  She  had  changed, 
too,  during  these  years  of  war.  She  too  had  had  secret 
adventures  of  the  soul.  They  had  actually  been  divorced 
before  quarrels,  open  infidelities,  passionate  endeavors 
for  reconciliation,  the  cold  and  dreadful  certainty  that 
the  old  love  was  dead,  led  them  to  state  their  case  before 
the  court. 

Strange  and  terrible  revelations!  After  twenty  years 
of  married  life,  men  with  grown-up  children  whom  they 
had  loved  devotedly  sought  a  dissolution  of  marriage 
with  women  who  had  believed  in  their  eternal  faith — 
or  it  was  the  other  way  about.  Some  hideous,  tremendous 
im-pulse,  long  hidden  in  subconsciousness,  had  broken 
its  fetters.  Men  after  the  years  of  war  had  a  sense  of 
second  youth  at  their  home-coming.  They  did  not 
desire  a  return  to  the  old  life,  but  the  beginning  of  a 
new  life.  Some  other  woman  offered  them  that.  After 
the  tremendous  excitement  of  the  war  impulse  they 
craved  for  some  new  impulse  equally  dominating  and 
exciting.  New  love  or  its  counterfeit  provided  them 
with  this  sensation.  I  believe  in  hundreds  of  cases  this 
was  the  psychology  of  their  broken  partnership,  and 
in  the  woman's  case  it  was  no  different.  Yet  by 
explaining  we  do  not  condone.  "  Tout  savoir,  c'est 
tout  pardonner! "  That  is  true,  but  the  weakening  of 
resistance  in  human  nature  to  the  evil  of  disloyalty  is 
a  serious  matter  for  civilization.  Lack  of  self-control 
is  not  to  be  lightly  disregarded,  nor  replaced  by  easy 
allegiance  to  "the  spirit  of  liberty."  Christianity, 
anyhow,  must  be  shipwrecked  on  these  shifting  sands, 
and  even  the  inherited  code  of  morals  which  in  many 

95 


r 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

countries,  as  in  England,  is  for  the  mass  of  people  the 
sole  remaining  heritage  of  Christian  faith. 


IV 

Is  Christianity  itself  going  down,  after  nineteen  cen- 
turies of  struggle  to  hold  its  authority  as  the  religion 
in  which  humanity  may  find  its  ultimate  reason  for 
obedience  and  sacrifice,  and  its  supreme  comfort  in  a 
world  of  discomfort — ^this  "vale  of  tears"?  Even 
before  the  war  there  had  been  a  steady  growth  of  skep- 
ticism and  revolt,  less  passionate,  but  more  deadly  than 
in  the  centuries  of  conflict  between  Protestantism  and 
Catholicism,  or  the  days  of  challenge  between  science 
and  faith.  That  old  warfare  had  quieted  down.  In 
intellectual  circles  there  was  a  wider  tolerance,  on  both 
sides.  Science  had  yielded  some  of  .its  "certainties" 
to  faith.  Religion,  even  inside  the  Catholic  Church, 
had  adopted  some  of  the  claims  of  science,  admitting 
the  possibility  of  evolution,  though  not  accepting  asser- 
tions of  absolute  proof,  revising  its  geological  dates,  not 
standing  rigidly  to  the  literal  interpretation  of  Old 
Testament  stories.  In  many  ways  religion  seemed  to 
be  regaining  old  ground,  capturing  new  fields  of  mission- 
ary enterprise.  The  advance  of  Catholicism  in  England 
and  the  United  States  was  remarkable  in  mere  num- 
bers, although  it  must  be  reckoned  with  the  increase 
in  population.  But  among  Protestant  denominations, 
and  in  nominally  Catholic  countries,  like  France  and 
Italy,  there  had  been  a  steady  abandonment  of  reUgious 
fervor,  a  quite  definite  undermining  of  faith  in  Chris- 
tian dogma  by  skeptical  philosophy,  reaching  down  to 
the  humblest  classes.  It  was  not,  as  I  have  said,  a 
fierce  skepticism.  It  was  stolid  indifference.  People 
could  not  be  "bothered"  with  religious  controversy. 
There  had  been  too  much  of  it.     They  had  no  ill  will 

06 


THE  NEED  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

to  folk  who  liked  to  go  to  church — any  old  church — 
but  they  preferred  to  stay  away.  Less  and  less  to  the 
middle  classes  and  laboring  classes  did  religion  seem 
to  have  any  real  relationship  with  Ufe  and  death.  The 
parsons  talked  a  lot  of  stuff  which  was  obviously  in- 
sincere. At  any  rate,  they  were  all  quarreling  with 
one  another  as  to  what  it  really  meant — flatly  contradict- 
ing one  another.  In  France  and  Italy  the  old  Latin 
skepticism  and  cynicism  was  prevaihng,  even  in  the 
peasantry,  and  the  young  intellectuals  of  France,  in 
spite  of  new  movements  among  them,  to  make  religion 
"good  form"  again,  could  not  resist  the  genial  incre- 
dulities of  Anatole  France,  literary  successor  to  Vol- 
taire, Rabelais,  and  all  the  master  skeptics  of  their 
literary  heritage.  The  harsh  and  brutal  reahsm  of 
Zola  and  his  school,  their  onslaught  upon  faith,  had 
become  old-fashioned.  As  in  England,  indifference 
rather  than  challenge  was  the  new  spirit.  Even  CathoHc 
Frenchmen,  or  many  of  them,  thought  themselves 
among  the  faithful  if  they  married  in  church,  baptized 
their  children,  and  received  the  last  sacraments  before 
death.  Otherwise  they  did  not  trouble  the  church, 
though  they  doffed  their  hats  to  the  village  priest  and 
thought  him  a  very  good  fellow  if  he  did  not  poke  his 
nose  into  their  private  affairs. 

The  state  of  religious  life  before  the  war  in  France 
was  rather  stagnant,  Hke  this.  Only  in  the  universi- 
ties and  among  the  aristocracy  was  there  an  attempt, 
not  altogether  unsuccessful,  to  revive  the  Catholic 
spirit  as  part  of  the  noble  heritage  of  France,  and  to 
associate  it  with  a  patriotism  which  foresaw  the  new 
ordeal  of  war  with  Germany.  The  army  chiefs,  like 
Foch  and  Castelnau — the  inner  cHque  of  the  High 
Command — were  Catholics  of  the  old  school,  devout 
and  firm  in  the  faith  that  France  was  ordained  by 
God  to  attain  a  new   and   spiritual   victory   over  the 

97 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

barbarians  who  were  now  called  "Boches."  The 
cult  of  Jeanne  d'Arc  became  the  fashion.  On  the 
other  side  the  syndicalists  and  labor  parties  generally- 
attacked  the  Church  with  contempt  and  scurriHty  as 
the  great  power  of  reaction,  and  France  was  ruled  by 
politicians  who  had  supported  destruction  of  Church 
and  state,  and  denounced  Catholicism  with  ridicule 
and  blasphemy. 

In  Prussia,  the  chosen  kingdom  of  "the  good  old 
German  God"  as  the  Kaiser  used  to  say,  with  an  air 
of  genial  patronage,  there  had  been  a  rapid  dechne  in 
religious  and  spiritual  standards,  according  to  many 
competent  observers,  even  of  their  own  race.  Ever 
since  the  victory  of  1870  the  Prussian  people  had 
become  more  and  more  arrogant,  selfish,  and  material- 
istic. Their  Protestantism  had  always  been  harsh  in 
its  character,  without  the  kindness  and  sweet-tempered 
quality  of  our  own  denominations  after  the  mellowing 
of  the  old  Puritan  austerities  or  the  mild  and  sentimen- 
tal spirit  of  the  old  German  tradition  in  other  parts  of 
the  Empire.  But  the  Prussian  character  deteriorated 
when  its  Protestantism  was  abandoned  for  a  gross 
materialism,  a  blatant  and  bullying  atheism,  with  no 
more  exalted  faith  than  that  of  world  empire  under 
Prussian  domination.  I  am  not  one  of  those  who  be- 
lieve that  every  Prussian  is  possessed  by  seven  devils, 
that  by  the  very  shape  of  his  head  he  is  outside  the 
kinship  of  the  European  family,  and  that  the  mark  of 
the  beast  is  upon  him.  That  seems  to  me  an  exagger- 
ation convicting  us  of  self-conceit,  national  self-com- 
placency, and  Phariseeism  closely  approaching  the  very 
characteristics  we  are  condemning.  If  the  Prussian 
believed  before  the  war  that  he  was  the  noblest  type 
of  human  being,  and  that  the  Empire  he  had  founded 
had  the  close  support  of  God,  and  that  his  destiny,  his 
very  duty,  was  to  rule  less  civilized  peoples,  it  must 

98 


THE  NEED  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

be  admitted  that  there  have  been  Englishmen  with 
the  same  conceit  of  themselves.  I  have  met  them  at 
club  dinners,  and  have  listened  to  their  proclamation 
of  such  simple  faith.  But  in  Prussia,  and  perhaps  to 
a  less  degree  in  other  parts  of  Germany,  this  stirring 
of  national  confidence  in  a  future  of  enormous  conquest 
was  supported  by  brutal  qualities  deliberately  devel- 
oped by  education  and  public  opinion,  and  as  that 
educational  influence  deepened  it  created  a  degrada- 
tion of  morality.  Spiritual  values  sank  to  a  low  level, 
and  in  their  painting,  their  architecture,  their  drama, 
and  their  social  amusements  one  saw  a  kind  of  morbid 
defiance  of  all  that  is  gentle  and  refining  in  life.  The 
word  "stark"  was  a  kind  of  spell  upon  them.  Worse 
than  that,  though  that  was  bad  and  enervating,  a 
strain  of  degenerate  vice  attacked  them.  Without 
raking  up  the  filth  of  war  propaganda,  it  must  be  said 
that  night  life  in  Berlin,  for  instance,  was  worse  than 
anything  in  cities  like  Paris  or  London  (whose  virtue 
was  not  unchallenged!),  worse  in  coarseness  and  com- 
plete abandonment  of  any  decent  code.  In  the  army 
the  Prussian  military  caste  was  tainted  with  very 
abominable  corruption.  Prussia,  in  spite  of  many 
fair  qualities  and  many  good  people,  was  governed  by 
a  spirit  of  evil.  As  far  back  as  1872  one  old  watcher 
of  life.  Cardinal  Manning,  saw  the  sowing  of  these 
weeds  in  the  Prussian  spirit,  and  in  prophetic  words 
foretold  what  now  has  happened: 

The  aberrations  of  a  false  philosophy — the  inflation  of  false 
science — the  pride  of  unbelief — and  the  contemptuous  scorn  of  those 
who  believe — are  preparing  Germany  for  an  overthrow  or  for  suicide. 

All  was  not  well  with  Christianity  before  the  war. 
When  war  came  it  was  in  danger.  Its  own  priests  and 
ministers  endangered  it.  Adopting  the  material  watch- 
words, in  England  as  well  as  in  Germany,  proclaiming 

99 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

God  and  the  justice  of  God  to  be  on  the  side  of  their 
own  battalions,  in  Germany  as  well  as  in  England  and 
France,  in  Austria  as  well  as  in  Italy,  they  forgot  that 
simple  lads  who  had  been  to  church  or  had  at  least 
heard  the  words  "God  is  Love,"  or  "Thou  shalt  not 
kill, "  or  "Love  one  another, "  or  "  Forgive  your  enemies," 
asked  themselves  in  dugouts  and  ditches  whether  there 
could  be  any  divine  authority  for  such  commands 
when  they  were  told,  by  the  very  men  who  preached 
them,  not  to  love,  but  to  hate;  not  to  forgive,  but  to  kill. 
They  were  quite  certain  they  had  to  kill.  That  was 
obvious,  disgusting  though  it  was  to  most  of  them. 
Therefore  what  was  the  truth  of  a  religion  which  said, 
"Thou  shalt  not  kill".?  Many  of  them  after  a  time,  by 
fear  or  by  weariness  or  by  some  queer  idealism,  inartic- 
ulate, but  becoming  more  clearly  conscious  and  con- 
vincing as  the  war  dragged  on  in  what  seemed  inter- 
minable slaughter,  came  to  criticize  the  whole  meaning 
of  the  war,  to  thrust  its  guilt  not  only  upon  Germany, 
but  upon  the  system  of  civilization  which  had  made 
it  possible,  and  the  leaders  of  that  civilization,  and  the 
teachers. 

They  worried  out  crude  little  syllogisms.  "If  Christi- 
anity is  right,  then  war  is  wrong,  or  if  war  is  right  (or 
this  war), then  Christianity  is  a  lie. "  And  again:  "Every- 
thing that  I  was  taught  not  to  do  I  am  now  taught  to 
do,  and  ordered  to  do.  That  means  that  the  whole 
moral  code  under  which  I  was  brought  up  was  hypoc- 
risy to  keep  me  quiet.  I  was  taught  not  to  lie,  but  the 
newspapers  and  the  politicians  lie  all  the  time,  and  make 
a  virtue  of  it.  I  was  taught  to  say  my  prayers  to  a  good, 
kind,  loving  God  Who  would  answer  them.  But  when 
my  pal  Bill  prayed  that  he  might  get  through  that  raid 
for  the  sake  of  his  wife  and  kids  (I  heard  him  when  he 
thought  I  slept),  a  shell  came  and  blew  his  blooming 
head  off — and  anyhow  I  don't  see  any  signs  of  a  good, 

lOO 


THE  NEED  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

kind,  loving  God.  .  .  .  Where  is  God,  anyway,  in  this 
year  1914  (or  1917),  and  what  proot  is  there  of  His 
interest  in  humanity  ?  Or  what  proof  is  there  of  human- 
ity's interest  in  Him?  Christianity  has  been  going  a 
long  time.  Is  this  the  result  of  it?  It's  all  a  queer 
mix-up.  The  Germans  seem  a  pious  crowd.  Before 
every  battle  they  pray  and  take  the  sacraments,  just 
like  some  of  us,  only  more  so.  Is  God  helping  them  or 
us.^  .  .  .  .  By  God!  the  weather  seems  to  favor  'em?" 

Less  crudely  than  that,  but  with  higher  perplexities, 
secret  indignation  of  soul,  other  men,  more  cultured, 
questioned  the  truth  of  Christian  faith,  and  could  not 
reconcile  it  with  the  business  in  hand.  Nor  could  they 
acquit  its  ministers  of  insincerity.  They  became 
skeptics  even  in  the  presence  of  death,  or  found  some 
queer  little  shrine  of  faith  of  their  own,  some  pagan 
creed  of  stoicism  or  fatalism,  at  which  they  worshiped, 
for  comfort's  sake. 

Many  of  them  were  like  that,  as  I  have  told  in  other 
writings.  Many  of  them  in  spite  of  others  who  were 
glad  of  their  chaplains,  who  became  more  fervent  in 
religious  duties,  who  became  converts  to  Catholicism 
and  then  fell  in  battle  like  Christian  martyrs  to  the 
beasts,  who  carved  the  sign  of  the  Cross  in  the  chalk 
of  their  dugouts — I  have  one  of  those  chalk  crosses 
now  in  a  cabinet  of  relics — or,  like  the  French  at  Ver- 
melles,  made  a  little  altar  to  Notre  Dame  des  Tranchees, 
and  crowded  round  a  soldier  priest  with  bent  heads, 
receiving  from  his  earthy  hands  the  body  of  Christ  in 
the  mystery  of  the  Sacrament,  with  childlike  faith, 
before  they  died.  (Not  one  escaped  in  that  part  of 
the  line.) 


I  will  not  dwell  on  what  happened  in  war.     I  have 
written  that.     Here  I  would  write  of  what  happened 

lOI 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

after  the  war  and  is  now  in  action.  There  has  been 
no  spiritual  revival.  Christianity  has  not  marched  to 
new  victories.  It  is  still  menaced  with  heavy  losses, 
a  general  retreat  all  along  the  line  of  human  society. 
Christian  priests  and  pastors  have  not  yet  dispelled 
the  doubt  and  darkness  that  came  over  the  spirit  of 
many  men.  Their  authority  and  their  faith  are  still 
challenged  and  a  greater  indifference  than  that  before 
the  war  is  in  the  minds  of  people  toward  the  claims 
of  Christian  dogma. 

The  enormous  turmoils  of  war  loosened  all  the  con- 
trols of  character,  upheaved  old  traditions  of  thought 
and  conduct  and  behef.  The  enormous  turmioil  of 
peace  loosened  them  still  more,  until  they  rattle.  The 
brakes  of  the  civilized  world  will  not  hold  back  the 
social  machine  as  it  speeds  downhill. 

The  effect  of  peace  was,  at  the  time,  like  a  sudden 
liberation  of  souls  in  bondage.  The  world  breathed  a 
deep  sigh  and  then  ran  riot.  I  think  now  as  I  write  of 
all  the  wild  scenes  I  saw  in  Beligum  and  France  and 
England  during  the  celebration  of  the  armistice  and 
peace.  They  were  not  Christian  in  their  general 
manifestation.  It  is  true  that  the  churches  were 
thronged,  that  many  prayers  of  thanksgiving  were 
uttered,  but  in  the  streets  of  great  cities  and  of  small 
it  was  a  Bacchanalia  absolutely  pagan.  The  women 
behaved  like  maenads  and  hamadryads,  dancing,  sing- 
ing, giving  themselves  up  to  the  joy  of  life  which  had 
been  so  long  denied.  Wild-eyed,  ecstatic,  with  abandon- 
ment of  all  restraint,  they  went  to  the  festivals  of  the 
streets  to  celebrate  the  return  of  the  heroes.  Youth 
had  been  reprieved.  Old  Man  Death  had  been 
cheated  of  his  last  harvest  of  boys.  Love  had  come 
back. 

Love  was  unlicensed  In  the  streets.  Quick  greetings, 
quick  meetings,  what  mattered  in  the  weeks  of  armis- 

103 


THE  NEED  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

tice?  The  soldiers  of  the  Allies — English,  French, 
Belgian,  American,  Italian — the  prisoners  of  all  the 
armies  swarming  through  the  lines  again,  the  women 
who  had  waited  for  them,  the  girls  who  had  been  im- 
patient of  their  coming,  mingled  in  the  crowds  of  joy 
and  knew  no  law  but  that.  Only  those  who  were  cold 
and  old  resisted  the  carnival.  Only  those  who  were 
sad   and   solitary  with   remembrance. 

It  was  then  that  the  dancing  mania  took  possession 
of  Europe.  Even  in  Germany,  defeated,  despondent, 
still  a  little  hungry,  youth  danced  in  the  Bierhalle  and 
Weinstube,  as  I  saw  them  on  the  Rhine.  Even  in 
Vienna,  where  children  starved  and  could  not  sit  up 
with  rickety  limbs,  there  was  dancing  in  the  gilded 
restaurants.  I  made  a  tour  in  Europe  through  many 
cities  and  countries,  and  everywhere  the  music  of  jazz 
bands,  the  wild  rhythm  of  them,  throbbed  in  my  ears 
to  the  beat  of  dancing  feet. 

I  remember  now  one  little  picture  among  many 
others  of  that  dancing  time.  It  was  on  the  digue  at 
Zoute  Knocke,  close  to  Zeebrugge,  where  there  was 
the  hell  of  war  and  where  still  the  wreckage  of  it  lay 
about. 

There  were  charming  girls  there  of  the  best  Belgian 
families,  and  English  girls,  and  Americans,  and  Russians, 
and  Poles,  and  Czecho-Slovaks,  with  young  men  who, 
I  found,  had  been  prisoners  in  Germany,  or  officers  at 
Dixmude,  or  in  a  pleasant  exile  in  England,  during  the 
war. 

The  orchestra  for  the  dance  was  not  magnificent.  It 
was  a  simple  piano-organ  worked  by  the  untiring  arms 
of  a  humble  philanthropist,  not  without  reward.  It 
played  "Tipperary"  and  "The  Broken  Doll"  un- 
ceasingly, to  the  rhythm  of  the  fox-trot  and  the 
one-step. 

103 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

The  light  from  the  cafe  windows  splashed  across  the 
roadway,  making  shadow  pictures  on  the  pavement  of 
the  dancers  who  came  within  its  gleam,  whose  frocks 
and  faces  were  touched  by  its  glamour  until  they  danced 
into  the  gloom  beyond  that  range  of  radiance  where 
there  was  night  and  the  pale  sea. 

Outside  the  cafes  sat  the  fathers  and  mothers  of  the 
dancers,  smiling  as  they  watched  the  swaying  of  young 
couples,  the  fantastic  steps,  the  queer  rhythmic  kaleido- 
scope of  that  dance  on  the  digue. 

The  wind  was  strong.  It  caught  many  a  tress  and 
blew  it  across  the  laughing  face  of  a  girl.  It  wafted 
off  the  hats  of  the  boys  and  made  their  hair  wild.  Frocks 
were  tossed  into  billows  above  long  white  stockings  and 
long  black  stockings,  and  in  and  out  of  the  grown-up 
dancers  small  children  danced,  wonderfully  learned  in 
the  latest  steps,  like  little  marionettes. 

Next  to  me  sat  a  man  who  had  factories  at  Ypres  and 
Bailleul  and  Messines,  where  now  there  are  only  ashes 
and  the  rags  and  bones  of  buildings.  Some  of  his  girls 
were  dancing  there,  and  he  smiled  as  he  watched  them 
pass,  greeting  him  with  their  eyes,  over  the  shoulders 
of  their  cavaliers. 

"It  is  youth  that  dances  on  the  edge  of  ruin,"  he 
said  in  French.  *'It  is  youth  that  dances  to  the  tune 
of  life." 

Another  picture  comes  to  my  mind — night  in  the 
Grande  Place  of  Brussels  with  shadow  pictures  in  the 
windows  of  the  old  guildhouses  near  the  Hotel  de  Ville 
and  the  Maison  du  Roi. 

Here  three  centuries  ago  princes  and  princesses  sat 
down  to  banquets  in  those  mansions,  and  the  old  Place 
itself  with  its  beauty  of  gilded  pillars  and  sculptured 
stonework,  still  holding  all  the  memory  of  the  golden 
age  in  Flanders,  was  crowded  with  nobles  and  ladies  and 
great  merchants  coming  and  going  up  the  flights  of  steps, 

104 


THE  NEED  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

hollowed  out  now  by  the  tread  of  many  feet,  which 
lead  into  the  paneled  rooms. 

I  heard  music  through  open  windows  and  went  up- 
stairs into  one  of  those  old  rooms.  It  was  thronged 
with  young  men  and  women  of  humble  class,  dancing 
together. 

In  the  minstrel's  gallery  sat  a  company  of  large  musi- 
cians playing  large  instruments  loudly.  To  the  blaring 
noise  of  it  the  Flemish  dancers  surged  round,  doing  the 
fox-trot  and  the  two-step.  The  boys  danced  in  bowler 
hats  and  billycocks,  and  the  ladies  combed  their  hair 
between  the  dances.  A  negro  in  a  black  suit  and  felt 
hat  came  in  with  a  big  black  box  and  opened  it  solemnly. 
I  expected  to  see  a  magic  carpet  brought  out,  or  some 
wizardry,  but  he  sold  lollipops  to  girls  who  tried  to 
steal  them.  The  boys  banged  the  girls  about  good- 
naturedly  in  the  Flemish  style.  The  girls  danced  often 
with  each  other,  with  a  wonderful  knowledge  of  the 
latest  steps.  Now  and  then  a  boy  and  girl  sat  down 
heavily  together  on  the  boards,  and  there  were  shrieks 
of  laughter.  Two  girls  spoke  to  me  in  English.  One 
of  them  showed  me  the  portraits  of  her  lovers.  There 
were  twenty  of  them,  and  all  young  English  soldiers. 
She  was  sorry  the  war  was  over.  .  .  .  Another  girl, 
waxen-faced,  dark-eyed,  ugly,  kept  telling  me  about  a 
boy  named  Harry  whom  she  had  loved.  They  had 
lived  together  for  a  month,  and  when  he  went  she  wept 
her  heart  away. 

A  young  Belgian  soldier  spoke  to  me  and  explained 
the  spirit  of  the  company. 

"For  five  years  there  was  war,"  he  said;  "now  there 
is  pleasure.  We  wish  to  make  up  for  those  five  years. 
It  is  the  same  with  everybody.  We  are  forgetting  the 
war  and  finding  the  pleasure  of  life. " 

"Are  there  any  who  remember?"  I  asked. 

He  shrugged  his  shoulders.     "The  poor  devils  with 
8  105 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

only  one  leg,  or  no  legs,  cannot  dance.  There  are  others 
who  are  blind.  Some  are  rotten  with  disease.  The 
lucky  ones  dance.     It  is  our  luck." 

And  everywhere  in  Europe  the  lucky  ones  danced. 


VI 

Then  gradually  came  disillusionment,  disgust,  except 
where   youth    refused   to   renounce   its    rights.     For    a 
year  or  more  in  some  countries  like  England,  for  much 
less   in   others,   governments    and    peoples   maintained 
a   fictitious  show  of  prosperity,   persuaded  themselves 
that  their  debts  did  not  exist,  that  their  prosperity  was 
assured,  now  that  victory  had  come.     In  England  the 
demobihzed  soldiers  lived  on  doles  and  pensions,  and 
the  time  of  their  withdrawal,  when  they  must  go  to  work 
again,  was  several  times  postponed.     France  was  buoyed 
up  by  large  promises  of  the  fruits  of  victory,  and,  though 
prices  soared  to  a  fantastic  height,  wages  rose,  too,  to 
most  of  them.     I,  and  many  others  wiser  than  I,  prophe- 
sied the  coming  of  reality  and  was  called  a  gloomy  dog 
for    such    dark    forebodings.     But    it    came.     Steadily 
reality  bore  down  again  the  fiction  of  national  arith- 
metic, international  rivalry.     Paper  money  would  not 
buy  real  things.     Real  things  must  be  made  by  hard 
work.     Those    who     could     not    work     must     starve. 
Disease  in  one  part  of  Europe  would  cause  ill  health 
in    other    parts,    and     Russia,    Poland,    Austria,   were 
stricken  with   social   ruin.     Manufacturers  would   find 
production  futile  if  they  could  find  no  markets  to  buy 
their  goods.     They  could  not  longer  pay  high  wages, 
or  any  wages,  if  markets  were  shut  against  them.  Unem- 
ployment would  grow  apace  if  Europe  did  not  set  its 
house    in    order    by    reconciliation    and    free   trade    in 
peace.  .  .  . 

Those  things  happened  in  England,  in  many  countries, 

1 06 


THE  NEED  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

even  in  the  United  States  of  America,  untouched,  as 
they  beheved,  by  European  conditions.  And  as  they 
happened,  the  psychology  of  peoples  was  affected  by 
bitterness  and  ill  will  and  suspicion  and  anger.  Where 
were  all  the  fine  promises  made  to  them  in  war?  "A 
land  fit  for  heroes  to  live  in!"  That  was  the  promise 
to  British  soldiers.  "The  fruits  of  victory!"  had 
been  the  promise  to  the  peoples  of  France.  Instead, 
taxation  bore  down  with  crushing  burdens.  Poverty 
showed  its  ugly  head,  men  who  had  been  heroes  in 
the  war  broke  their  hearts  against  the  hardness  of  this 
peace. 

Even  that  was  insecure.  Wars  and  rumors  of  war 
shook  the  ground  of  eastern  Europe  and  of  Asia  with 
tremblements  de  terre  that  caused  uneasiness  and  alarm 
on  our  side  of  the  Continent.  The  future,  for  boys  old 
enough  to  rejoice  at  peace,  was  covered  with  a  black 
pall.  The  great  conflict  had  been  called  "a  war  to 
end  war. "  This  peace  looked  like  a  peace  to  end  peace. 
By  old  stupidities  or  new  devilries,  the  statesmen  of 
Europe  seemed  to  have  made  a  hopeless  mess  of  victory. 
The  peoples  looked  for  new  leaders  who  did  not  come. 
Under  the  tightening  pressure  of  war  burdens  and  peace 
failures,  they  became  hard,  cynical,  selfish.  It  was  a 
fight  now,  not  for  high  ideals,  but  for  wages  that  would 
not  be  below  the  1914  standard  of  living,  reckoned  in 
actual  values.  It  was  no  longer  to  be  a  search  for  a 
new  world,  but  a  struggle  for  existence.  Not  idealism, 
but  materialism,  was  the  gospel  of  many  who  for  a  time 
had  been  generous  in  sacrifice,  splendidly  forgetful  of 
self.  In  that  state  of  selfishness  are  we  now,  as  I  write 
this  book. 

Yet,  by  a  strange  and  tragic  contradiction,  there  has 
been  no  time  in  modern  history  when  the  peoples  of 
the  old  civilization  have  been  so  desperately  eager  for 
spiritual  guidance.     There  is  a  great  thirst  for  spiritual 

IQ7 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

refreshment  among  those  in  the  dry  desert  of  our  present 
discontent.  I  find  expression  of  that  among  many  men 
and  women  not  ''rehgious"  in  temperament  nor  of 
sentimental  type,  but  rather  among  cynics  and  ironists 
and  reahsts.  In  conversation,  at  the  end  of  pessimism, 
they  are  apt  to  admit  that  "nothing  can  save  us  all 
but  some  new  prophet  of  God."  Or  they  cry  out  for 
some  new  faith  to  inspire  nations  with  some  tremendous 
spiritual  impulse  leading  to  renunciation  of  selfish 
ambitions,  to  a  cleansing  of  hearts.  Out  of  the  House 
of  Commons,  that  assembly  of  "hard-faced  men  who 
look  as  if  they  had  done  extremely  well  out  of  the  war," 
out  of  that  House  of  Worldly  Wisemen,  came  a  plea 
for  "a  spiritual  lead." 

In  the  Middle  Ages  western  Europe  was  united  by  a  single  idea 
which  sent  the  common  man  in  his  hundreds  of  thousands  away 
to  the  Crusades;  which  enshrined  itself  in  countless  wonderful 
cathedrals,  abbeys,  churches;  which  produced  great  schools  of 
philosophy  and  art,  great  epic  poems,  and  great  institutions.  It 
expressed  itself  in  a  theory  of  government  manifested  in  Holy 
Roman  Empire  and  Holy  Catholic  Church.  It  expressed  itself 
likewise  in  the  lives  of  great  men  and  in  the  royalty  of  St.  Louis,  the 
sainthood  of  St.  Francis,  the  statesmanship  of  Hildebrand.  This 
ideal,  like  all  the  ideals  by  which  the  great  societies  of  men  in  the 
long  past  of  our  race  have  been  fashioned,  wore  out.  .  .  .  To-day  we 
possess  no  common  ideal.  We  thrill  with  no  common  hope.  We 
tremble  at  no  common  terror.  The  nations  of  Europe  are  all  adrift 
one  from  another,  and  the  classes  within  each  nation  have  Hkewise 
fallen  asunder.  The  respect  for  real  superiorities  has  vanished, 
along  with  that  for  the  traditional  superiorities.  Rank  rests  on  no 
recognized  sanction.  We  are  all  one  as  good  as  another.  Vulgar 
ostentation  replaces  true  distinction.  The  old  catchwords  are 
meaningless.  .  .  .  The  world  of  our  day  languishes  for  a  new  St. 
Francis  who  shall  call  it  to  a  new  knowledge  of  itself.  He  will  not 
have  to  go  far  for  his  message.  It  is  not  in  Heaven,  neither  is  it 
beyond  the  sea,  "but  the  word  is  very  nigh  unto  thee,  in  thy  mouth, 
and  in  thy  heart,  that  thou  mayest  do  it."  Who  will  utter  the  word 
in  all  simplicity  ?  The  world  is  waiting  for  his  voice.  Let  him  plainly 
set  before  us  "life  and  good,  and  death  and  evil."  There  is  no  doubt 
which  we  shall  choose. 

Io8 


THE  NEED  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

So  wrote  from  the  smoking  room  of  the  House  of 
Commons — reeking  with  cynicism  and  haunted  by  the 
betrayal  of  all  ideals — Sir  Martin  Conway,  M.P.,  to 
the  office  of  the  Times. 

"We  thrill  with  no  common  hope,"  he  said;  "we  trem- 
ble at  no  common  terror. "  He  is  right  in  thinking  so,  in 
so  far  as  nations  are  still  divided  and  peoples  are  unable 
to  link  up  their  hopes  and  their  terror  in  one  united 
faith  and  action.  Yet  I  see  beneath  the  Europe  of  our 
present  state  the  same  hopes  and  the  same  terror  stirring 
among  all  people,  and  out  of  them  will  come,  I  believe, 
the  salvation  of  civilization,  if  it  is  to  be  saved.  Even 
this  materialism  of  which  I  have  been  writing  is  largely 
the  bitterness  of  peoples  whose  ideals  have  been  frus- 
trated but  not  killed,  and  wjao  grab  at  petty,  selfish 
things  because  they  seem  the  way  to  larger  hopes.  A 
good  deal  of  the  social  unrest,  the  spirit  of  revolt  among 
us,  the  violence  of  revolution,  is  due  to  "common 
hopes"  and  "common  terror,"  working  crudely  in 
many  minds  in  many  nations.  The  terror  is  the  fear 
of  new  and  devastating  wars  thrust  upon  the  peoples 
by  evil  statesmanship  or  created  by  their  own  passions. 
To  avoid  that  terror,  the  spirit  of  democracy  is  running 
about  like  a  rat  in  a  trap,  wild-eyed,  fierce  with  fear. 
It  was  not  the  love  of  militarism,  but  the  fear  of  another 
war,  which  caused  the  French  people  to  demand  ruthless 
sanctions  against  the  Germans,  to  support  the  Polish 
alliance,  to  flame  with  anger  against  the  English  who 
spoke  of  fair  play  even  to  Germany.  And  it  was  not  a 
different  motive,  but  the  same,  which  led  the  EngHsh 
democrats  to  protest  against  too  harsh  a  treatment  of 
Germany,  because  they  believed  that  only  by  reconcili- 
ation and  generosity  to  the  beaten  enemy,  whose  strength 
would  one  day  be  great  again,  could  Europe,  and  France 
herself,  be  saved  from  another  orgy  of  massacre.  The 
dangerous  philosophy  of  revolutionary  labor,  the  wild 

109 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

insanity  of  Bolshevism  itself,  and  its  reaction  in  many 
countries  like  Italy  and  England,  fostered  by  men  of 
evil,  with  evil  manifestations  of  bloodshed  and  violence, 
had  their  influence  over  the  simple  minds  of  the  masses 
because  of  their  fair  promise  of  fulfilUng  the  "common 
hopes"  of  humanity  and  averting  the  ''common  terror. " 
Those  hopes  were  and  are  the  abandonment  of  slaughter 
as  a  method  of  argument  between  one  nation  and 
another,  a  closer  brotherhood  of  men  under  international 
law,  the  security  of  the  individual  and  of  his  family 
from  degrading  poverty,  the  abolition  of  rivalry  between 
class  and  class  by  greater  equality  of  service  and  reward, 
the  raising  of  the  general  standard  of  life  so  that  all  t 

men  and  women  shall  have  a  fair  share  of  life's  beauty  I 

and  joy.     These  are  the  ideals  astir  in  the  democracies  -, 

of  England,  France,  Italy,  Germany,  Russia,  the  United  '} 

States.     They  are  good  ideals.     They  could  be  blessed  | 

by  Pope  and  priests  and  pastors.     They  are  indeed  the  ! 

ideals  of  society  set  out  in  the  Gospel  of  Christ  for  which  j 

we  have  all  been  struggling  through  centuries  of  travail.  ^ 

They  are  now  astir,  passionately,  in  the  little  houses  in  ■* 

mean  streets,  in  peasants'  hovels,  in  city  slums,  in  revo- 
lutionary committees,  in  Red  armies,  in  literary  debat- 
ing societies,  in  the  private  apartments  of  the  Pope  of 
Rome.  Most  of  the  troubles  of  Europe  to-day  are  due 
to  the  desperate  eflPorts  of  peoples  to  fulfill  those  ideals.  | 

In  their  human  bhndness  and  folly  they  adopt  evil  to  | 

attain  the  ideal  good.     English  workingmen,  like  those  j 

in  other  countries,  think  that  by  striking  continually  ! 

they  can  maintain  their  wages  to  the  level  of  a  high  I 

standard  of  living,  whereas  the}''  are  killing  their  own 
source  of  wealth.  The  communists  believe  that  by 
killing  capital  they  can  secure  equality,  which  perhaps 
is  true,  though  it  is  an  equality  of  ruin.  To  abolisli 
war  and  create  an  international  society,  Trotzky  raised 
his    Red    armies,   and   Lenin   launched   his   ultimatum 

no 


THE  NEED  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

against  all  governments,  thereby  leading  to  appalling 
atrocities  and  to  incessant  bloodshed.  The  failure  of 
European  statesmen  to  create  a  new  world  out  of  the 
ruins  of  the  old,  and  the  power  of  reactionary  leaders  to 
crush  the  hopes  of  the  idealists  looking  forward  to  a 
reconstruction  of  society  with  less  inequality  between 
those  who  work  and  those  who  profit,  have  poisoned 
the  brains  of  many  people  not  otherwise  evil.  Indig- 
nation against  "profiteers,"  a  sense  of  injustice,  an 
impatience  with  old  ways  of  political  argument  and 
with  old  calls  to  loyalty  and  obedience  from  men  who 
gained  most  and  suffered  least  when  their  calls  were 
answered,  are  seething  in  the  caldron  of  mass  psychol- 
ogy. Yet  the  "common  hopes, "  masked  by  materialism, 
expressed  in  violence,  are  in  their  essence  the  general 
aspiration  of  humanity  toward  a  higher  phase  of  social 
life.  Here  is  a  great  power  of  idealism,  which  some  new 
leader  might  call  upon  for  immense  service.  Cleansed 
from  its  grossness,  lifted  above  selfishness,  spiritualized, 
it  might  now  very  quickly  reform  the  world  and  lead  us 
forward  to  new  conquests  of  civilization. 


VII 

I  have  said  that  the  ideals  of  the  time  are  the  same  in 
the  antechambers  of  the  Pope  as  in  the  thatched  cot  of 
the  peasant.  That  sounds  like  an  affected  phrase,  yet 
not  long  after  the  war  it  was  in  the  Pope's  own  room,  and 
from  the  Pope  himself,  that  I  heard  the  proof  of  that. 
Looking  back  upon  that  interview  I  had  with  him  in  the 
Vatican,  I  am  astonished  at  the  temerity  with  which  I 
asked  for  it  and  the  rapidity  with  which  it  was  granted, 
for  it  was  against  all  precedents  and  contrary  to  the 
austere  etiquette  and  privacy  which  surround  the 
Vatican.  It  was  not  merely  the  desire  for  a 
newspaper  "scoop,"  the  vulgarity  of  which  I  loathe, 

III 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

which  led  me  to  Rome,  with  the  ardent  wish  to  speak 
with  that  httle  man  who,  as  the  Holy  Father,  has  the 
loyalty  of  millions  of  men  and  women  in  all  countries 
of  Christendom.  I  was  distressed  with  the  agony  of 
the  world,  almost  as  great  in  peace  as  in  war,  and  it 
seemed  to  me  then,  as  it  does  now,  that  a  spiritual 
message  was  needed  to  give  a  lead  to  democracy.  I 
remembered  how,  through  the  war,  many  people,  not 
Catholics,  had  looked  to  the  Pope  as  the  one  man  who 
might  rise  above  the  conflict  and  in  thundering  words, 
or  perhaps  in  a  voice  of  penetrating  sweetness,  call  the 
world  back  to  sanity  and  Christian  brotherhood.  That 
did  not  happen.  Sorrowful  messages  came  from  him, 
deploring  the  "fratricidal  strife";  privately  he  offered 
himself  as  mediator  and  peacemaker,  but  no  message 
came  to  stir  the  hearts  of  peoples  with  burning  words, 
irresistible  in  appeal  or  command.  In  England  we 
thought  him  pro-German.  In  Germany  they  thought 
him  pro-Ally.  The  world  ignored  him  and  his  own 
priests  were  with  the  world.  But  even  now  he  might 
say  something  worth  hearing  by  peoples  looking  for 
leadership.  Through  the  Daily  Chronicle  of  London 
and  the  Times  of  New  York  I  could  get  the  words 
read  by  millions  of  plain  folk — ^the  nobodies  of  life 
who  were  looking  for  a  spiritual  lead.  That  quite 
simply  and  truly  was  why  I  asked  to  interview  the 
Pope. 

My  intermediary  was  a  certain  Monsignor  Ceretti, 
well  known  in  the  United  States  and  Australia,  where 
he  had  learned  to  speak  English  with  a  slight  American 
accent  and  breezy  unconventionality  of  manner  which 
encouraged  audacity.  He  laughed  heartily  when  I 
told  him  of  my  desire.  "Impossible!"  he  said.  "They 
don't  allow  journaHsts,  even  at  a  public  audience." 
We  spoke  of  other  things.  Tactfully  I  abandoned  my 
request  until  the  end  of  the  conversation,  when  I  said, 

in 


THE  NEED  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

"Of  course  there  is  no  chance?"  He  smiled  and  said, 
"I  will  let  you  know." 

Of  course  there  was  no  chance,  and  I  put  the  idea  out 
of  my  head  until  at  the  Hotel  Bristol  I  received  a  card 
permitting  me  to  be  received  in  private  audience  by 
iS^  Saintete  for  twenty  minutes,  at  noon  on  the  following 
day.     The  impossible  had  happened! 

It  was  of  course  a  great  honor — President  Wilson 
himself  had  been  granted  this  same  time  limit — and  to 
me  a  great  adventure.  I  remember  now  my  nervous- 
ness, as  I  put  on  evening  dress  on  the  morning  of  the 
interview — according  to  etiquette — and  wrecked  a  white 
tie  so  miserably  that  I  had  to  borrow  a  waiter's,  and 
made  a  hopeless  botch  of  it.  So  through  the  golden 
sunHght  of  an  October  day  in  Rome,  in  the  year  19 19, 
I  drove  in  an  old  carozza  to  the  Vatican.  I  felt  like  a 
man  with  a  great  mission,  I  was  going  to  get  a  message 
which  might  help  the  sick  old  world  a  little.  As  the 
great  dome  of  St.  Peter's  came  into  view,  with  the  wide- 
embracing  sweep  of  its  colonnades — those  mighty 
columns  on  each  side  of  the  cathedral  square — I  thought 
of  the  great  popes  who  had  raised  the  magnificence  of 
this  shrine  and  whose  acts  had  made  Rome  the  head- 
quarters of  Christendom  through  every  age.  Some  of 
them  had  been  evil  men,  weak  men,  but  many  were 
strong,  with  a  burning  passion  in  them  which  had 
lighted  new  fires  of  faith,  active  in  charity,  unyielding 
in  their  assertion  of  authority,  immensely  powerful, 
not  only  by  virtue  of  their  office,  but  by  force  of  charac- 
ter, splendor  of  justice,  love  of  humanity,  sainthood. 
The  world  needed  such  leadership  now. 

In  the  white  entrance  hall  of  the  Vatican,  to  the  right 
of  St.  Peter's,  I  was  saluted  by  the  halberdiers  in  their 
striped  tunics  and  hose,  passed  up  a  long  flight  of  marble 
steps,  walked  through  many  antechambers  in  which 
stood  groups  of  papal  guards,  and  in  a  smaller  room 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

was  greeted  by  a  chamberlain  who  knew  my  business. 
Five  minutes  passed,  which  seemed  longer  than  ten. 
A  door  opened  and  a  monk  came  out  with  a  smile  about 
his  lips  as  though  satisfied  with  words  spoken  to  him. 
The  chamberlain  beckoned  me.  At  the  doorway  stood 
Benedict  XV. 

He  was  a  simple  figure,  dressed  in  white,  not  so  tall 
as  I  had  expected — a  tiny  man — and  with  a  scholar's 
look,  a  little  austere  at  first  glance.  Only  at  a  glance, 
for,  after  my  first  salute  and  when  I  asked  him  for 
permission  to  speak  in  French,  he  laughed  in  a  genial 
way,  and  said,  in  French  also,  *'In  that  language  we 
shall  understand  each  other. " 

Then  he  took  me  by  the  hand  and  led  me  to  a  chair 
close  to  his  own,  so  that  we  sat  side  by  side. 

He  asked  me  about  America  first,  having  heard  that 
I  had  been  there  not  long  ago,  and  then  asked  me  to  tell 
him  about  the  little  studies  I  have  been  making  of  the 
conditions  of  Europe  after  the  war. 

I  spoke  to  him  about  the  distress  of  peoples  burdened 
by  high  prices  and  heavy  taxation,  and  about  the  curious 
and  rather  dangerous  psychology  of  many  people  in 
England,  France,  Belgium,  and  Germany — probably  in 
Italy  also — who  are  in  revolt  against  present  conditions, 
and  are  disillusioned  about  that  "new  world"  which 
they  expected  after  the  war. 

The  Pope  listened  attentively,  and  then  cut  me  short, 
as  I  had  hoped. 

"Yes,"  he  said,  "the  war  was  a  scourge" — he  used 
that  word  ^^ jieau^  several  times  in  his  conversation — 
"and  the  effects  of  it  are  enormous  and  incalculable. 
When  it  began  people  imagined  that  it  would  be  a  quick 
war,  lasting  three,  four,  five  months.  Few  guessed  that 
it  would  last  for  nearly  five  years.  That  long  period  of 
strife — ^that  terrific  scourge — will  have  far-reaching 
and  enduring  results.     The  people  must  make  up  their 

114 


THE  NEED  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

minds  to  endure  the  consequence  of  war.  They  must 
steel  the?nselves  to  suffer.  At  the  same  time  we  must  do 
everything  in  our  power  to  alleviate  those  sufferings  and 
to  ease  the  burdens  of  those  who  can  least  afford  to 
support  them." 

I  noticed  that  throughout  our  conversation  the  Pope's 
thoughts  seemed  to  be  concentrated  mostly  upon  the 
conditions  of  the  working  classes.  He  spoke  of  the 
people  rather  than  of  their  rulers,  and  of  the  poor  rather 
than  of  the  rich. 

When,  for  instance,  I  referred  agam  to  the  strikes  and 
other  symptoms  of  social  unrest  in  many  countries, 
he  said: 

"The  people  have  been  irritated  by  a  sense  of  injus- 
tice. .  .  .  There  are  many  men  who  have  made  money 
out  of  this  war." 

He  made  a  gesture  with  his  forefinger  and  thumb,  as 
though  touching  money,  and  said: 

"Those  who  grew  rich  out  of  the  war  will  have  to  pay. 
The  burden  of  taxation  will,  no  doubt,  fall  heavily 
upon  them." 

He  spoke  of  the  great  difficulty  of  the  financial  situ- 
ation in  all  countries  which  have  been  at  war.  He 
seemed  to  think  there  was  no  easy  or  quick  solution  of 
those  economic  problems,  nor  any  immediate  prospect 
of  bringing  down  high  prices  to  a  normal  level. 

"It  is  difficult,"  he  said,  "difficult." 

I  was  interested  when  he  referred  to  the  question  of 
the  forced  loan  in  Italy.  That  was  a  project  by 
which  a  levy  was  to  be  made  on  all  capital  in  Italy, 
starting  at  5  per  cent  on  all  fortunes  above  £800  and 
going  up  to  40  per  cent  on  the  largest  fortunes. 

The  Pope  did  not  express  any  definite  opinion  upon 
this  measure,  but  said,  "Undoubtedly  such  taxation  as 
that    would    lay    a    heavy    burden    upon    the    whole 


nation. " 


IIS 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

For  a  few  minutes  his  mind  went  back  to  the  great 
conflict  which  had  caused  all  this  financial  ruin  in 
Europe,  and  he  spoke  of  what  the  Catholic  Church  had 
done  and  tried  to  do  to  alleviate  its  miseries  and  agonies. 

"We  could  do  very  little,"  he  said,  "in  comparison 
with  the  enormous  suffering  caused  by  the  war;  but  as 
far  as  possible  we  took  every  opportunity  of  relieving 
the  sorrows  of  people  by  works  of  charity.  We  could 
do  no  more  than  that,  and  it  was  only  small  compared 
with  all  the  sufl^ering,  but  it  did  bring  comfort  to  many 
poor  people — ^wives  and  mothers,  prisoners  and  wounded 
— and  mitigated  some  of  the  severities  of  military 
acts. "  } 

He  mentioned  briefly  some  of  the  work  which  had  I 

been  achieved  under  his  direction,  and  referred  me  to  a 
detailed  list  of  charitable  services  done  during  the  war 
by  the  Holy  See. 

Among  those  works  which  Benedict  particularly 
mentioned  were  the  exchange  of  prisoners  of  war  in- 
capacitated for  military  service,  following  his  telegram 
dated  December  31,  1914,  to  the  sovereigns  and  heads 
of  belligerent  states,  and  the  liberation  and  exchange  of 
civilian  prisoners. 

These  proposals  were  accepted,  and  the  exchange  of 
prisoners  through  Switzerland  proceeded  quickly,  so 
that  between  March,  191 5,  and  November,  1916,  2,343 
Germans  and  8,868  Frenchmen  returned  to  their  own 
countries,  while  in  a  single  month  20,000  French  people 
passed  from  occupied  regions  to  southern  France. 

Then  the  Pope  mentioned  to  me  the  work  done  under 
his  direction  for  endeavoring  to  discover  the  where- 
abouts of  missing  men.  Soon  after  the  war  began 
letters  began  to  pour  into  Rome,  mostly  addressed  to 
the  "Holy  Father"  himself,  imploring  news  of  missing 
combatants.  The  Pope  read  them,  took  notes,  and 
ordered  inquiries  to  be  made,  and  toward  the  end  of 

116 


THE  NEED  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

1914  he  instituted  a  special  bureau,  with  branches 
afterward  at  Paderborn,  Freiburg,  and  Vienna. 

"In  many  cases,"  said  the  Pope,  **we  were  able  to 
give  news  to  poor  anxious  famihes,  but  of  course  in 
many  other  cases  there  was  disappointment." 

Over  100,000  letters  were  sent  to  the  families  of  Italian 
soldiers  who  were  captured  or  missing. 

He  also  mentioned  the  work  done  after  his  prolonged 
negotiations  with  the  Powers  to  secure  a  refuge  in 
Switzerland  for  the  sick  and  wounded,  and  especially 
for  consumptives. 

*'We  used  our  influence,"  he  said,  "whenever  possible, 
to  commute  the  death  penalty  of  people  condemned  by 
military  law  in  Austria  and  Germany.  In  a  number  of 
cases  this  was  successful." 

It  was  owing  to  the  Pope's  intervention  that  over  a 
hundred  French  hostages  from  Roubaix  were  liberated, 
and  among  many  other  people.  Princess  Marie  de  Croy 
(the  friend  of  Nurse  Cavell),  who  was  condemned  to 
ten  years'  penal  servitude  for  having  concealed  French 
and  Belgian  soldiers,  owed  the  mitigation  of  her  punish- 
ment and  other  concessions  to  the  Pope's  intercession. 
It  was  impossible  for  him  to  act  in  the  case  of  Nurse 
Cavell,  owing  to  the  rapidity  and  secrecy  of  her  exe- 
cution. 

The  Pope  made  only  a  passing  allusion  to  these  serv- 
ices, and  said  again:  "It  was  very  little.  We  did  all 
that  was  possible,  but  it  only  touched  the  great  anguish 
of  the  war." 

He  told  me  where  I  could  get  detailed  accounts  of  the 
enormous  sums  of  money  sent  by  the  Holy  See  to  Bel- 
gium, Poland,  Montenegro,  and  other  countries,  for 
the  purpose  of  feeding  starving  populations,  and  of  his 
repeated  protests  against  the  brutalities  of  war  by 
whomsoever  they  might  be  committed,  and  of  his  three 
appeals  for  peace,  the  last  of  which,  dated  August  i, 

117 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

1917,  contained  concrete  proposals  for  the  beginning 
of  negotiations,  very  similar  to  President  Wilson's 
"Fourteen  Points"  which  came  later. 

I  tried  to  induce  the  Pope  to  continue  upon  that  line 
of  conversation,  but  he  came  back  suddenly  to  the  con- 
ditions prevailing  after  the  war,  and  expressed  the  hope 
that  the  disillusionment  of  peoples,  the  inevitable  rise 
in  prices  owing  to  taxation,  and  financial  distress, 
would  not  lead  to  violence  or  anarchy. 

"It  is  the  duty  of  all  men,"  he  said,  "to  endeavor  to 
solve  these  social  problems  in  a  lawful  and  peaceable  way 
and  so  that  the  burden  will  be  fairly  shared  with  good 
will  and  charity. " 

Speaking  about  the  relations  between  capital  and 
labor,  he  referred  several  times  to  the  writings  or 
"Encyclicals"  of  Leo  XIII  upon  those  subjects,  which, 
he  said,  expressed  very  clearly  and  in  great  detail  the 
Christian  principles  regarding  the  rights  of  working- 
men  and  of  employers,  as  well  as  the  duties  of  the 
state.  He  hoped  those  writings  by  Leo  XIII  might  be 
popularized,  as  they  bore  directly  upon  the  problems  of 
modern  social  conditions. 

"All  their  teaching,"  he  said,  "may  be  summed  up 
in  two  words — Justice  and  Charity.  If  men  behave 
justly  and  with  real  Christian  charity  toward  one 
another,  many  of  the  troubles  of  the  world  will  be  re- 
moved. But  without  justice  and  charity  there  will  be 
no  social  progress. " 

After  a  few  more  remarks  on  general  subjects,  in  which 
he  showed  his  desire  for  the  welfare  of  the  people  and  for 
an  alleviation  of  the  sufferings  which  now  prevail  in  so 
many  countries  as  a  direct  consequence  of  the  war, 
the  Pope  rose  from  his  chair  and  the  audience  ended, 
after  exactly  twenty  minutes,  with  his  direct  permission 
to  me  to  pubhsh  the  general  course  of  this  conversation. 

The  words  he  had  spoken  were  not  sensational,    To 

118 


THE  NEED  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

be  quite  truthful,  I  was  disappointed  with  them.  There 
was  nothing  in  what  he  had  said  which  would  call  to 
the  hearts  of  peoples  with  trumpet  notes,  no  great 
cry  of  pity  and  appeal,  no  passion  of  spiritual  leadership. 
Here  was  a  little,  scholarly  man,  using  no  high-flown 
phrases,  but  talking  with  keen  common  sense,  sincere 
interest  in  the  problems  of  democracy,  sadness  at  the 
tragedy  of  the  world.  Most  people  would  see  nothing 
but  platitudes  in  what  he  told  me.  Yet,  after  all,  as 
I  reflected,  when  I  went  out  again  into  the  sun-swept 
square  of  St.  Peter's,  they  were  platitudes  based  upon 
the  authority  of  old  and  wise  tradition,  and  upon  a 
faith  in  Christ,  and  such  words  spoken  by  a  pope  or  by 
a  peasant  might  fall  strangely  upon  the  ears  of  a  world 
deafened  by  loud  and  hostile  cries,  after  a  war  in  which 
such  a  phrase  as  "Christian  charity"  was  mocked  by 
hatred  and  cruelty.  After  this  interview  I  wrote  a 
sentence  which  now  I  read  and  write  again:  "Those 
two  words,  now,  at  this  present  day,  in  this  Europe 
which  I  see  so  full  of  suffering,  revolt,  and  passion,  hold 
perhaps  the  truth  toward  which  mankind  is  groping 
desperately  in  all  manner  of  ways,  with  divers  philos- 
ophies. They  overturned  the  pagan  world  when  Peter 
came  to  Rome,  and  still  have  power.  '* 

VIII 

Perhaps  Christianity  is  passing  beyond  the  faith  of 
men  who  have  no  longer  the  simplicity  of  mind  to 
believe  its  mysteries.  We  must  face  that  question. 
If  so,  is  there  any  new  religion  likely  to  arise  and  com- 
mand the  allegiance  of  the  world  with  an  authority  which 
they  acknowledge  as  divine?  For  if  not,  it  is  certain 
that  there  will  be  no  rally  up  from  the  spiritual  degra- 
dation into  which  we  have  fallen,  but  still  further  a 
lowering   of  moral   standards,    a    grosser   materialism. 

119 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

All  the  experience  of  human  life  in  history  goes  to  show 
that  mankind  will  not  be  obedient  long  to  any  law  of 
self-restraint  and  self-denial  unless  it  is  imposed  upon 
their  conscience  by  a  supernatural  authority  which  they 
believe  divine.  Yet  without  self-denial,  human  society 
must  cease  to  exist,  even  human  life  must  end  abruptly, 
because  men  and  women  will  not  continue  to  raise  up 
children  unless  they  are  impelled  by  the  fear  of  sin. 
For  the  pursuit  of  human  happiness  ends  always  in 
disillusion  and  despair,  and  without  spiritual  hope  of 
some  compensating  life  beyond  the  grave  this  earthly 
span  will  seem  but  mockery  as  always  it  has  seemed  in 
the  past  to  thoughtful  souls,  balancing  the  debit  and 
credit  side  of  life's  account. 

There  are  some  who  believe  that  by  "Education"  | 

humanity  will  reach  greater  heights  of  happiness  and 
a  nobler  code  of  moral  law.  That  is  hard  to  believe, 
for  the  philosophers  of  the  past  and  present  have  not 
claimed  great  stores  of  happiness,  though  they  were 
rich  in  knowledge.  Nor  has  education  worked  out  to 
virtue,  as  far  as  we  may  grasp  the  standards  of  the  high- 
est culture.  Germany  was,  beyond  doubt,  the  best 
educated  nation  in  Europe,  but  the  most  educated  among 
them  were  not  most  virtuous.  They  were  most  wicked. 
In  Italy  of  the  Renaissance  there  were  fine  scholars, 
great  humorists,  lovers  of  beauty,  but  they  put  no 
curb  on  passion,  nor  did  all  their  talent  kill  their  cruelty. 
The  code  of  virtue  is  hard  to  obey.  It  is  the  martyr- 
dom of  passion.  It  is  pain  to  the  flesh  and  torture  to 
the  spirit,  except  among  rare  souls  who  find  an  easy 
way  through  life.  Nor  will  any  change  in  the  code  of 
morality  help  human  nature  to  be  free  of  this  penalty 
of  pain.  Easy  divorce  may  break  a  marriage  which 
has  failed,  but  will  not  mend  broken  hearts.  Marriage 
or  no  marriage,  love  free  as  the  four  winds,  the  abohtion 
of  all  law  and  punishment,  will  not  take  out  of  life  its 

1 20 


THE  NEED  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

hardships  and  Its  agonies,  and  as  we  know,  if  the  past 
means  anything  to  the  present,  the  lack  of  law,  the 
denial  of  spiritual  duties,  ordained  by  a  God  believed 
and  feared  by  men,  ends  in  beastiality  and  blood  lust. 
For  the  heart  of  man  is  deceitful  above  all  things  and 
desperately  wicked. 

It  must  be  the  old  faith,  or  a  new  faith,  with  divine 
authority,  stronger  over  the  minds  of  men  than  man- 
made  law.  That  is  acknowledged,  subconsciously,  by 
all  people  to-day.  Those  who  have  abandoned  the  old 
faith  are  not  satisfied  with  atheism  or  agnosticism. 
Secretly  they  grope  about  for  some  other  God,  or  Devil. 
There  is  an  immense  amount  of  this  secret  groping,  this 
reaching  out  to  a  spirit  world  by  means  of  incantations, 
spells,  and  wizardries.  It  is  a  bad  sign.  It  was  done 
in  Rome  before  the  downfall,  in  London  at  its  lowest 
phase,  between  the  Middle  Ages  and  Modernity,  when 
foul  old  James  was  king  and  Kerr  with  his  witch- 
wife  was  favorite  in  Paris  before  the  Revolution. 
INo  new  faith  to  lead  humanity  forward  seems 
hkely  to  come  from  spirit-rappings,  table-turnings, 
planchettes,  and  all  the  incoherent  revelations  of  the 
subconscious  mind  exhibited  in  the  "spirit-writings'* 
of  Vale  Owen  and  his  kind,  which  have  deluded  so  many 
simple  minds  craving  for  spiritual  guidance,  for  commun- 
ion with  their  dead,  for  certainty  in  future  life. 

It  has,  perhaps,  only  one  redeeming  quality,  and  that 
is  the  proof  that  human  beings  need  some  high  sanction 
for  their  way  of  life,  and  reach  out  to  a  spiritual  law  as 
their  one  hope  of  comfort. 

All  this  stirring  and  strife  of  the  world  means  that. 
All  this  social  unrest  is  but  the  search  for  the  ideal  happi- 
ness. And  everywhere,  in  all  classes  and  all  nations, 
there  are  numbers  of  men  and  women  filled  with  a  pas- 
sion for  service,  ready  for  self-sacrifice,  desperately 
eager  for  spiritual  leadership  which  will  give  the  world 

Q  121 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

greater  peace,  and  the  peoples  of  the  world  a  better 
chance  of  happiness  in  their  souls  and  in  their  lives. 
There  is  an  amount  of  good  will  in  the  world  to-day 
which  would  recreate  all  social  life,  if  but  a  leader  came 
to  guide  it  and  unite  it  with  a  common  impulse.  I  do 
not  think  that  leader  will  come,  not  in  the  old  way, 
singly,  in  sainthood,  with  some  message  of  all-embracing 
love.  I  think  rather  it  will  be  by  the  closing  up  of  all 
these  separated  impulses  among  the  plain  folk,  by  a 
sudden  unity  of  purpose  before  a  common  peril  threat- 
ening them  all,  and  by  the  combined  leadership  of  many 
minds,  still  young  and  unformed,  in  our  midst,  gathering 
up  all  these  ideals  and  emotions  and  hopes  and  giving 
form  to  them,  and  order.  ■ 

The  common  peril  is  the  decay  of  civilization  by  a  J 

lowering  of  the  standards  of  living,  due  to  the  breakdown  j 

of  economic  machinery  which  turned  the  wheels  of  our 
old  life,  and  the  menace  of  another  devastating  war 
which  would  stop  them  altogether.  The  peoples  are 
conscious  of  that  peril.  Instinctively,  at  least,  they 
are  aware  of  It.  I  believe  that  suddenly,  when  it  assumes 
a  more  terrifying  aspect,  they  will  gather  together  in 
a  great  and  common  crusade  to  avert  its  horrors.  All 
the  myriad  impulses  of  good  will  which  I  find  everywhere 
in  the  world  beneath  the  hard  crust  of  national  egotism, 
will  flow  in  a  broad,  steady  river  of  spiritual  purpose, 
and  perhaps  the  old  lamps  of  Christian  faith  will  be 
relit. 

There  is,  I  fancy,  a  troubled  conscience  among  some  of 
the  ministers  of  the  Christian  churches,  a  sense  of 
guilt  and  of  fear.  In  the  universal  tragedy  of  the  war 
they  were  rebuked  by  the  pettiness  of  their  sectarian 
quarrels,  their  utter  loss  of  touch  with  the  souls  of  men, 
condemned  to  die  because  their  teaching  had  failed. 
Now,  after  the  war,  they  are  troubled  because  in  that 
time   they   were    Impotent,    divided    into   nationalities 

122 


THE  NEED  OF  THE   SPIRIT 

like  the  warring  nations,  and  into  defenders  of  the 
state  (right  or  wrong),  instead  of  being  united  as  defend- 
ers of  the  Faith.  Surely,  as  they  knew,  religion  must 
be  more  universal  than  that  of  Juju  men  of  the  war- 
painted  tribes.  In  the  Hibbert  Journal  at  which  I 
glance  from  time  to  time  as  an  adventure  in  psychology, 
there  have  been  great  outpourings  of  heart,  confes- 
sions of  failure,  pleas  for  unity,  programs  for  bringing 
the  Christian  churches  into  closer  touch  with  the  people. 
They  seem  to  believe  they  have  their  chance  now,  once 
more,  to  restore  the  old  faith  to  the  people,  and  their 
last  chance.  I  believe  that  the  Protestant  churches 
will  make  a  desperate  bid  for  that  by  identifying  them- 
selves with  the  economic  interests  of  democracy  and 
supporting  them  in  all  demands  that  are  clear  in  justice. 
This  new  attempt  was  seen  very  clearly  in  the  great 
British  coal  strike  in  the  spring  of  this  year,  when  a  group 
of  bishops  of  the  Anglican  Church  supported  the  case  of 
the  miners  and  affirmed  in  the  spirit  of  Pope  Leo  XIII 
that  the  first  charge  on  industry  should  be  the  wages 
of  labor  sufficient  for  the  decent  livelihood  of  the 
workers.  That  was  a  sign  of  a  new  spirit  in  the  Church 
of  England  which  did  not  excite  more  than  a  passing 
comment,  yet  it  was  remarkable  from  a  body  of  men  who 
by  their  tradition  of  caste  and  training,  since  the  alli- 
ance between  state  and  Church,  have  been  aristocratic 
in  their  intellectual  outlook,  stubborn  opponents  of 
democratic  progress,  and,  with  a  few  notable  exceptions, 
stanch  defenders  of  the  power  and  privilege  of  wealth, 
however  unjust  in  its  oppression.  Even  now  the  clergy 
of  England  as  a  body,  apait  from  many  zealous  mis- 
sionaries among  the  poor  of  the  cities,  stand  for  the  old 
order  and  not  for  the  new,  for  the  squirearchy  and  not 
for  the  peasantry,  for  aristocracy  of  rank  and  money 
against  the  rising  claims  of  the  great  crowd.  They  do 
§o  without  corrupt  intentions  or  conscious   snobbery, 

123 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

being  for  the  most  part  men  of  amiable  character 
and  devoted  service,  abominably  poor  themselves  in 
the  small  parishes,  but  it  is  their  intellectual  heritage. 

There  is  one  among  them  who  is  an  intellectual 
champion  of  the  old  order,  a  very  dangerous  enemy  of 
democracy  whose  very  name  he  loathes  as  a  foul,  ill- 
flavored  word.  This  is  Dean  Inge,  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  figures  in  Enghsh  hfe  to-day — "the  gloomy 
Dean,"  as  he  is  called  in  the  popuir.r  press.  A  mel- 
ancholy man,  profoundly  interested  in  all  the  facts  of 
Hfe,  able  to  relate  them  to  the  experience  of  history 
throughout  the  ages,  he  has  an  angry,  irritable  contempt 
for  the  shabby  ignorance,  the  loose  thinking,  the  lyings, 
shams,  and  insincerities  of  pohticians  and  pressmen. 
With  a  gloomy  vision,  justified,  alas,  in  its  gloom,  he  re- 
gards the  moral  slackness  of  the  masses  and  the  economic 
misery  of  Europe  without  sentiment,  and  in  a  hard, 
realistic  spirit.  He  is  contemptuous  of  the  little  ex- 
pedients of  humanists  and  intellectuals  to  cure  the  evils 
of  our  state.  He  sees  strong  tides  and  currents  of  social 
evolution  sweeping  all  such  efforts  like  straws  before 
them.  He  watches  the  checks  and  balances  of  nature, 
controUing  the  destiny  of  men.  He  sees  man  himself  as 
a  puppet  of  blind  forces  buffeted  about,  broken,  without 
power  over  his  own  direction.  Disease,  famine,  wars, 
the  ebb  and  flow  of  trade,  the  struggle  of  races,  the  rise 
and  fall  of  empires,  the  progress  and  retrogression  of 
human  society,  are  the  themes  with  which  he  deals  with 
a  sense  of  mastery  and  with  a  kind  of  savage  joy  in 
revealing  the  impotence  and  absurdity  of  human  en- 
deavor. His  arguments  have  brought  him  to  the  con- 
clusion that  the  white  races  will  go  down  before  the 
dark  races  unless  they  revert  to  dirt-cheap  labor, 
abandon  all  social  progress  for  the  masses,  and  raise 
greater  armies  than  before  to  maintain  their  heritage — 
even    then    being    bound    to    lose    in    course    of  time 

124 


THE  NEED  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

when   the   dark   races  will   also  arm   and   advance  to 
destroy. 

Testimonies  [he  wrote]  which  might  easily  be  multiplied, 
and  which  are  not  contradicted,  are  sufficient  to  prove  that  under  a 
regime  of  peace,  free  trade,  and  unrestricted  migration  the  colored 
races  would  outwork,  underlive,  and  eventually  exterminate  the 
whites.  The  importance  of  this  fact  cannot  be  exaggerated.  The 
result  of  the  European,  American,  and  Australian  labor  movement 
has  been  to  produce  a  type  of  workingman  who  has  no  survival 
value,  and  who  but  for  protection  in  its  extremest  form,  the  prohi- 
bition of  immigration,  would  soon  be  swept  out  of  existence.  And 
this  protection  rests  entirely  on  armed  force;  in  the  last  resort,  on 
war.  It  is  useless  to  turn  away  from  the  facts,  however  unwelcome 
they  may  be  to  our  socialists  and  pacifists.  The  abolition  of  war 
and  the  establishment  of  a  league  to  secure  justice  and  equality  of 
treatment  for  all  nations,  would  seal  the  doom  of  the  white  laborer, 
such  as  he  has  made  himself.  There  was  a  time  when  we  went  to 
war  to  compel  the  Chinese  to  trade  with  us,  and  when  we  ruined  a 
flourishing  Indian  trade  by  the  competition  of  Lancaster  cotton. 
That  was  the  period  which  it  is  the  fashion  to  decry  as  a  period  of 
ruthless  greed  and  exploitation.  The  workingman  has  brought 
that  period  to  an  end.  To-day  he  is  dreaming  of  fresh  rewards, 
doles,  and  privileges  which  are  to  make  the  white  countries  a  para- 
dise for  his  class.  And  all  the  time  he  is  living  on  sufference,  behind 
an  artificial  dike  of  ironclads  and  bayonets,  on  the  other  side  of 
which  is  a  mass  of  far  more  efficient  labor,  which  would  swallow 
him  up  in  a  generation  if  the  barriers  were  removed. 

In  his  philosophical  writings  Dean  Inge  strives  to  be 
unbiased,  scientific  in  his  search  for  truth,  but  through- 
out them  all  he  reveals  himself  as  the  protagonist  of 
aristocracy  and  the  enemy  of  the  mob,  a  believer  in 
slave  labor,  well  disciplined,  kept  tame,  subservient 
to  authority  by  force  and  moral  obedience.  He  belongs 
to  the  school  of  thought  which  in  the  early  nineteenth 
century  defended  the  use  of  child  labor  in  factories 
for  fourteen  hours  a  day,  fought  step  by  step  against 
all  the  Factory  Acts  which  gave  the  workers  a  chance 
of  decency  and  health,  and  opposed  the  trade  union 
which  helped  to  gain  those  victories  as  the  work  of  the 

125 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

devil.  The  clergy  of  the  Church  of  England,  especially 
those  in  comfortable  livings,  belonged  to  that  school  of 
thought,  and  betrayed  the  Gospel  of  Christ  by  their 
toadyism  to  the  cruelest  company  of  industrial  slave 
drivers  that  have  ever  escaped  hanging  by  outraged 
humanity.  It  was  their  callousness  to  the  sufferings  of 
the  people  that  divorced  the  Church  of  England  from 
the  masses.  If  Dean  Inge  prevails  over  his  brethren, 
the  Church  of  England  will  disappear  under  a  wave  of 
wrath.     But  he  is  a  lonely  man  these  days. 

Everywhere,  in  all  classes  and  in  all  nations,  the 
spirit  of  the  people  is  rising,  claiming  new  rewards,  a 
bigger  share  of  life's  good  gifts,  and  seeking  some  way 
of  escape  from  the  eternal  menace  of  war,  the  crushing 
burdens  of  armaments,  the  idiocy  of  international  strife. 
Ever3rwhere  the  spirit  of  good  will  is  gathering  strength 
to  fight  the  spirit  of  ill  will,  to  obtain  union  over  disunion, 
and  construction  instead  of  destruction.  Even  Dean 
Inge  ought  to  see  that  if  the  peril  of  the  dark  races  is 
real,  the  only  answer  is  the  unity  of  the  white  races, 
rather   than   endless    rivalry   with    bouts    of  massacre.  | 

The  people  begin  to  see  that.     They  demand  leadership  | 

to  that  end.  They  will  produce  their  own  leaders.  It 
is  the  hope  of  Europe. 


IV 

THE   NEW   GERMANY 


DURING  the  war  the  German  people  were  put  out- 
side the  pale  of  civilization  by  the  Allied  propagan- 
dists and  by  public  opinion,  fever-heated  not  only  by 
those  engineers  of  passion  (enormously  efficient),  but  by 
their  own  nightmares  of  imagination  and  ferocity.  The 
French  called  them  "Bodies"  and  "Barbares, "  the 
British  called  them  "Huns,"  and  the  readers  of  the 
Daily  Mail  and  other  popular  journals  believed 
firmly,  and  here  and  there  continue  to  believe,  that 
"German"  means  the  same  thing  as  "Devil,"  and  that 
German  human  nature  is  in  none  of  its  characteris- 
tics similar  to  the  nature  of  the  rest  of  the  human 
family,  but  a  thing  apart — obscene,  monstrously  cruel, 
abominable. 

Most  of  these  characteristics  were  recorded,  in  mil- 
lions of  words,  within  the  first  six  weeks  of  war,  and 
became  fixed  for  all  the  war,  and  for  years  to  come,  in 
miUions  of  minds.  The  invasion  of  Belgium  was  the 
first  shock  under  which  the  imagination  of  people  who 
knew  nothing  of  modern  warfare  (none  of  us  knew) 
reeled  and  saw  red.  Then  followed  atrocity  stories — 
the  cutting  off  of  babies'  hands  and  women's  breasts, 
the  shooting  of  civilians,  the  burnings  in  Alost  and 
Louvain,  abominable  outrages  on  women  and  children. 
These  things,  told  day  after  day  by  correspondents, 
repeated  with  whispered  words  of  horror  in  every  house 

127 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

in  France  and  England,  reiterated  and  confirmed  (it 
seemed)  by  the  Bryce  Report — created  a  hatred  of  the 
German  race  too  deep  for  words,  in  masses  of  simple 
hearts.  Those  people  were  surely  devilish!  Not  Attila 
and  his  Huns  had  done  worse  things  in  the  dawn  of  his- 
tory. They  were  human  gorillas,  monsters.  The  re- 
moval of  the  women  of  Lille  and  other  towns  for  en- 
forced labor  away  from  their  own  folks  aroused  the 
fury  to  flaming  heights  again.  The  use  of  poison  gas, 
their  treatment  of  prisoners,  and,  later,  the  sinking  of 
merchant  ships  and  the  Lusitania  and  Red  Cross  ships 
in  an  unrestricted  U-boat  warfare,  gave  fresh  food  to 
those  greedy  for  the  continuity  of  Hate.  The  Germans 
from  first  to  last  were  "Huns"  of  inhuman  wickedness. 
So  many  wrote,  and  so  most  of  those  who  read  believed. 
I  was  not  one  of  those  who  wrote  or  believed  as  much 
as  that.  Never  once  throughout  the  whole  war  did  I 
call  the  Germans  "Huns,"  never  once,  from  first  to 
last,  did  I  in  my  thoughts  or  in  my  words  credit  those 
who  put  them  outside  the  human  family.  I  believed 
always,  with  what  seems  to  me  now  a  strange  obstinacy, 
though  I  have  not  altered  my  belief,  that  the  Germans 
as  a  people  were  neither  better  nor  worse  than  others  in 
Europe,  though  under  the  discipline  of  powers  a  little 
more  evil  and  cruel,  and  ruthless  in  cruelty,  than  other 
powers  dominating  the  actions  of  common  men.  I  have 
called  this  conviction  of  mine  a  "strange  obstinacy" 
because,  looking  back  on  it,  I  marvel  that  I  withstood 
the  tremendous  pressure  of  public  opinion  and  of  Ger- 
man guilt.  I  had  no  blood  ties  or  other  bonds  with  the 
German  folk.  Before  the  war  I  had  only  spent  a  few 
weeks  in  their  country.  My  affection  was  whole- 
heartedly for  the  French,  and  during  the  war  this  devel- 
oped into  a  deep  enthusiasm.  I  was  not  a  pacifist  in 
the  sens€  of  a  man  afraid  to  fight,  or  a  "conscientious 
objector"  against  fighting,  for   as    a  correspondent  all 

128 


THE  NEW  GERMANY 

my  soul  was  with  the  fighting  men,  and  I  risked  my  life 
with  them.  Nor  could  any  soul  alive  have  been  more 
sickened  by  those  tales  of  horror,  and  by  cruelty  unde- 
nied  and  undeniable.  I  was  there  to  see  the  manner 
of  German  destruction,  day  by  day,  year  by  year,  in 
ruined  cities  and  ravaged  fields,  and  all  their  killing  of 
young  manhood.  Yet  never  did  I  believe  in  their  mon- 
strosity, or  their  place  apart  in  the  human  family,  as 
ogre  changelings.  I  think  what  was  always  at  the  back 
of  my  mind  was  the  belief  that  the  German  people,  as 
a  whole,  the  peasants  and  the  clerks  and  the  manufac- 
turing fellows,  were  but  victims  of  a  damnable  discipline 
and  of  a  still  more  damnable  philosophy,  imposed  upon 
them  by  military  minds  of  a  rigid  and  almost  religious 
caste;  and  that  those  Prussian  Junkers  were  only  rather 
more  logical,  and  very  much  more  efficient,  in  the 
fulfillment  of  their  ideas  than  certain  English  militarists 
whom  I  had  happened  to  meet  along  the  way  of  life — 
an  opinion  in  which  I  have  since  been  confirmed  by 
certain  generals  in  Ireland  and  others  like  them  in  cere- 
bral structure  of  anthropoid  type. 

Again  and  again  I  met  German  prisoners,  captured 
freshly  on  the  field  of  battle,  talked  with  them,  watched 
them,  and  read  their  letters,  which  I  used  to  grab  from 
dugouts.  They  were  human  fellows,  all  right.  They 
hated  the  war  and  called  it  the  "Great  Swindle"  years 
before  it  ended,  and  cursed  their  officers.  They  were 
afraid,  like  our  men,  under  barrage  fire.  They  were 
mostly  very  civil,  and  glad  of  a  civil  word  to  them. 
They  loved  their  wives  and  children,  like  most  human 
animals  (a  little  more  than  most,  perhaps),  though 
doubtless  they  were  unfaithful  behind  the  lines  in  France, 
being  men  in  exile,  and  eager  for  what  life  could  give 
them  before  death  came.  In  physique  masses  of  them 
were  extraordinarily  like  English  fellows  of  country 
regiments.     There  was  not  a  bean  to  choose  between 

129 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

them.  Doubtless  some  of  them  got  beastly  drunk 
when  there  was  a  chance,  like  some  of  ours,  and  men  who 
are  beastly  drunk  do  beastly  things. 

Yes,  but  atrocities.?  .  .  . 

Well,  they  had  shot  down  civilians  in  cold  blood,  or 
in  hot  blood,  and  called  them,  justly  or  unjustly,  francs- 
tireurs.  Shots  had  come  from  Belgian  windows,  so 
they  said.  They  had  burned  Belgian  homes  and  put 
Belgian  men  and  boys  against  a  wall  and  killed  them. 
Horrible! — but  defended  in  my  hearing  by  British 
officers,  who  said:  "We  should  do  the  same.  It's  the 
law  of  war. "  Doubtless  there  had  been  many  atroci- 
ties, but  I  could  never  get  evidence  of  any  of  them. 
All  the  evidence  I  could  get  myself,  throughout  the  war, 
in  the  places  where  they  were  alleged  to  happen,  was 
against  the  truth  of  them.  No  living  babies  had  their 
hands  cut  off,  nor  women  their  breasts.  That  is  cer- 
tain, in  spite  of  faked  photographs.  No  Canadians 
were  crucified,  though  it  will  be  believed  in  Canada  for 
all  time.  The  evidence  was  analyzed  and  rejected  by 
our  G.  H.  Q.  There  were  no  German  "corpse  factories,'* 
though  our  Chief  of  Intelligence  patronized  the  myth. 
I  myself  inquired  for  atrocities  in  Lille,  Liege,  and 
captured  villages  in  which  we  rescued  civilians  who  had 
lived  for  years  in  Germans  hands.  I  could  not  get  any 
evidence  at  all.  The  civilians  themselves,  while  cursing 
the  Germans  as  a  ''sale  race^^^  did  not  charge  them  with 
abominable  acts  resembhng  in  any  way  the  atrocity 
stories  of  the  newspapers.  I  am  convinced  that  much 
of  the  evidence  in  the  Bryce  Report  is  utterly  untrust- 
worthy. Nevertheless,  there  were,  no  doubt,  atrocities, 
horrible  and  disgusting  cruelties,  on  evidence  that  can- 
not be  Hghtly  disregarded,  and  according  to  the  nature 
of  men — peasants,  drunken  fellows,  degenerate  brutes, 
living  in  an  enemy  country  in  time  of  war.  We  have 
seen  in  Ireland  the  cruelty  of  human  passion  on  both 

130 


THE  NEW  GERMANY 

sides.  There  were  bad  things  done  by  German  soldiers, 
and  there  were  worse  things  done  by  the  orders  of  the 
German  High  Command.  That  business  of  the  women 
in  Lille  was  unpardonable.  The  sinking  of  hospital 
ships  was  a  degradation  of  humanity  itself.  The 
smashing  of  French  machinery  in  cotton  mills  and  silk 
industries  revealed  an  evil  genius  corresponding  to  the 
destruction  of  Irish  creameries  condoned  by  Hamar 
Greenwood  and  providing  amusement  to  Lloyd  George. 
The  use  of  poison  gas  aroused  an  outcry  from  civilized 
peoples — among  the  Allies.  Our  own  intensive  use  of 
it  rather  dulled  the  sensibilities  of  public  opinion,  and 
our  recent  experiments  in  a  more  deadly  form  of  gas 
(highly  successful)  show  that  our  military  minds  intend 
to  use  it  in  the  next  war,  should  military  minds  still 
be  allowed  to  have  their  way.  Yet  the  charge  sheet 
remains  heavy  against  the  Germans  in  the  war,  nor  were 
the  people  themselves  guiltless  in  supporting  acts 
then  which  now,  in  defeat,  they  condemn.  Not  guilt- 
less, callous  of  much  cruelty,  so  that  they  might  get 
victory.  Well,  we  find  more  cruelty  in  human  nature, 
outside  Germany,  then  once  we  cared  to  believe.  In 
Russia  it  is  not  unknown,  though  Russians  w^ere  so  good 
and  kind  when  they  were  still  fighting  on  our  side. 
Even  in  England,  and  in  Ireland,  there  are  potentiali- 
ties of  cruelty  which  are  not  quite  reassuring  to  our 
self-complacency,  though,  on  the  whole,  we  are  a  kindly 
and  good-natured  folk,  unless  we  have  swerved  from 
the  straight  line  of  tradition.  The  more  I  see  of  differ- 
ent peoples,  up  and  down  the  world,  the  more  I  under- 
stand that  they  cannot  be  held  guilty  for  the  acts  of 
their  rulers,  for  the  policy  of  their  diplomats,  for  the 
cruelty  of  their  fellows,  or  for  their  own  ignorance  and 
stupidity.  There  is  no  "England"  when  foreign  folk 
say  "England"  does  this  or  does  that,  thinks  this  or 
that.     There  are  millions  of  English  people  who  do  and 

131 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

think  quite  differently,  or  have  no  share  in  what  is  done 
or  thought  in  particular  cases.  There  is  no  "France" 
when  we  say  "France"  is  hostile  to  England,  "France" 
wants  to  establish  a  military  autocracy  in  Europe. 
There  are  many  French  people  who  love  England  still, 
many  who  are  antimilitary.  So  the  German  house- 
wife, watching  her  children  develop  bulbous  heads  with 
rickets  (what  they  call  "the  English  disease")  because 
of  our  blockade,  had  very  Httle  to  do,  as  far  as  I  can  see, 
with  the  gas  attack  at  Ypres,  and  the  peasant  hustled 
from  his  plow  to  front-line  trenches  was  not  respon- 
sible directly  for  Von  Tirpitz  and  the  U-boat  war.  "  But 
they  supported  their  government,"  says  the  logical 
man.  "They  did  not  rise  and  overthrow  their  devilish 
leaders."  That  is  true.  But  English  folk  decline  to 
be  branded  because  their  government  has  done  things 
which  they  detest,  villanious  things,  without  honor, 
dirty  things  which  cannot  bear  the  light  of  day.  The 
clerks,  the  shop  girls,  the  farmers'  boys,  the  mechanics, 
have  not  overthrown  a  government  which  is  the  most 
sinister  combination  of  corrupt  interests  ever  known  in 
EngHsh  history.  They  have  neither  the  power,  nor 
the  knowledge,  to  control  or  check  or  defy  their  gov- 
ernment. Most  of  them  are  too  busy  with  their  little 
needs  of  life  to  bother  about  it. 


II 

The  claim  of  the  Germans  to  an  ordinary  share  of 
human  characteristics  was  admitted  by  most  of  our 
fighting  men  throughout  the  war,  who  called  the  man 
on  the  opposite  side  of  the  way  "Fritz"  or  "Jerry," 
with  a  certain  sympathy,  as  being  in  the  same  bloody 
mess,  and  with  real  admiration  as  a  first-class  fighting 
man.  The  claim  was  also  admitted,  instantly  and 
astoundingly,  by  the  British  troops  who  occupied  the 

132 


THE  NEW  GERMANY 

Rhine  bridgeheads  after  the  armistice.  The  Germans 
showed  no  kind  of  hostihty  against  our  men.  On  the 
contrary,  there  was  something  rather  humihating  at 
first  in  their  show  of  friendhness.  They  went  too  far, 
it  seemed  to  some  of  us,  in  playing  Enghsh  patriotic 
airs  in  their  public  restaurants,  so  soon  after  their 
defeat.  Fear,  perhaps,  as  well  as  a  desire  to  be  gemilth- 
ligf  was  the  secret  motive  of  their  friendliness.  If 
British  soldiers  had  been  ugly  tempered,  they  could  have 
made  a  hell  along  the  Rhine.  Better  to  keep  them  good 
tempered ! 

All  motives  apart,  there  was  quickly  on  the  Rhine  a 
"cordial  understanding"  between  our  men  and  German 
families  in  whose  houses  they  were  billeted.  Whether 
we  hke  to  admit  it  or  not,  there  is  something  German 
in  our  own  blood,  in  our  way  of  hfe,  in  our  manner  of 
speech.  The  houses  were  spotlessly  clean,  and  our 
Tommies  liked  this  cleanhness.  When  taps  were 
turned  on,  water  came  out,  and  our  men,  after  expe- 
rience in  French  billets,  where  sanitary  engineering  is 
not  a  strong  science,  said,  "Bloody  wonderful!"  After- 
ward some  of  them,  under  the  tuition  of  some  DeutscheS' 
Mddcheriy  said,  "Merkiviirdig!"  There  German  girls 
were  neat  and  clean  and  fair  and  plump,  like  buxom 
country  wenches  at  home.  They  were  good  inter- 
preters of  German  life  to  British  lads. 

Our  officers  yielded  more  tardily,  with  certain  prick- 
ings of  conscience,  and  with  a  stirring  of  old  memories 
and  oaths  of  hatred,  to  German  civility,  until  most  of 
those,  too,  were  captured  with  admiration  for  the  good 
order  of  German  social  life,  for  their  astonishing  indus- 
try and  efficiency,  for  the  solid  comfort  of  their  homes, 
and  for  their  habitual  sense  of  discipline.  There  were 
certain  types  of  German  manhood  who  remained  re- 
pulsive to  Enghsh  eyes  and  ideas — the  bald-headed 
vulture  type — but  so  quickly,  so  utterly,  did  all  sense 

133 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

of  Hate  disappear,  that,  sitting  in  some  of  those 
restaurants  in  Cologne  while  the  gospel  of  hate  was  still 
in  full  blast  at  home,  I  used  to  think  that  English 
maiden  ladies  and  patriotic  old  gentlemen  in  St.  James's 
Street  clubs,  and  newspaper  leader  writers,  would  have 
been  stricken  dumb  if  suddenly  confronted  with  these 
scenes  where  English  soldiers  chinked  beer  mugs  with 
German  soldiers,  sat  in  joyous  company  with  German 
girls,  and  Hstened  to  German  bands  playing  "The 
Roast  Beef  of  Old  England"  and  "Britannia  Rules 
the  Waves."  It  was  just  a  recognition  that  these 
people,  anyhow,  were  human  souls,  not  individually 
guilty  of  atrocities,  not  "Huns"  in  their  manners  and 
ideas,  not  particularly  responsible  for  the  war,  and 
jolly  glad,  like  our  people,  that  it  was  all  over  at  last. 
To  me  it  seemed  a  great  moral  lesson  in  humanity. 
I  saw  it  as  a  hope  that,  after  all,  human  nature  might  be 
stronger  than  international  hatreds — ^though  I  was 
wrong,  at  the  time,  for  international  hatred  reasserted 
itself,  mostly  on  our  side,  and  the  friendliness  of  men 
in  contact  with  one  another  could  not  overcome  the  hos- 
tilities and  greeds  and  plunder  spirit  of  politicians  and 
peoples  not  in  human  contact  with  defeated  nations. 
Justice,  also,  had  to  be  considered,  and  as  Madame 
Roland  apostrophized  liberty  from  the  scaffold,  so  might 
we  cry  out,  ''Comme  on  t'a  jouee  en  ton  noml"  (What 
games  they  have  played  in  thy  name!"). 

Ill 

The  German  people  acknowledged  defeat.  It  is  a 
mere  newspaper  myth  which  pretends  still  that  they 
never  realized  or  admitted  defeat.  The  terms  of  sur- 
render on  Armistice  Day  were  the  great  acknowledg- 
ment— an  annihilating  blow  to  all  their  military  pride. 
The  signing  of  the  Peace  of  Versailles  was  the  knell  of 


THE  NEW  GERMANY 

doom  to  any  last  vestige  of  incredulity.  The  German 
Empire  had  surrendered  its  armies,  its  fleet,  its  mer- 
cantile marine,  its  property  in  many  countries,  and  was 
pledged  for  years,  and  generations,  to  pay  such  great 
sums  of  money  in  indemnities  to  the  victor  nations 
that  no  imagination  could  grasp  their  significance 
beyond  the  certain  fact  that  German  industry  would 
be  taxed  to  the  utmost  limit  under  the  pressure  of  irre- 
sistible force.  Every  soldier  who  tore  off  his  shoulder 
straps  and  went  back  home  told  the  tale  of  the  last 
months  of  war,  when  there  were  no  reliefs,  no  reinforce- 
ments, no  chance  of  holding  the  front  against  the  enemy 
attacks,  so  that  they  were  rounded  up  like  sheep  after 
ghastly  slaughter.  It  is  true  that  men  like  Ludendorff 
and  other  generals  tried  to  fling  the  blame  of  defeat  on 
the  civilian  populations,  wrote  about  "the  stab  in  the 
back,"  blamed  the  revolution  for  the  breakdown  of 
the  armies.  That  cowardly  camouflage  has  not  de- 
ceived the  German  people,  though  newspaper  corre- 
spondents accept  it  on  its  face  value. 

"You  have  gambled.  You  have  lost.  You  must 
pay!"  said  a  Socialist  Deputy  in  the  Reichstag  when  I 
was  in  Berlin  this  summer,  and  he  turned  to  the  mem- 
bers of  the  Right — representatives  of  the  Junkers — who 
tried  to  mock  at  him,  but  then  were  silent  under  that 
lash  of  truth. 

They  knew  they  were  defeated,  the  German  people, 
in  their  bodies  and  in  their  souls. 

In  their  bodies  they  knew  long  before  the  ending  of 
the  war.  We  do  not  yet  realize — those,  at  least,  who 
were  not  in  Germany  at  once  after  the  armistice — how 
sharp  was  the  tooth  of  hunger  which  bit  them  and  how 
long  it  gnawed  at  them.  Even  rich  people  who  could 
pay  any  money  for  smuggled  food,  the  practice  of 
schleichhandlung,  as  they  call  it,  over  and  above  the 
allowance  of  their  ration  cards,  found  it  hard  to  get 

135 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

enough  to  satisfy  their  appetites.  Even  they  were 
always  a  Httle  hungry,  just  to  the  point  of  thinking 
continually  of  food,  remembering  their  last  good  meals, 
anticipating  the  next,  so  that,  as  I  am  told  by  them,  it 
became  an  obsession.  The  middle  classes,  not  rich 
enough  for  much  in  the  way  of  schleichhandlung 
(which  is  smuggling),  and  kept  to  the  strict  severity 
of  official  rationing,  never,  for  two  years,  had  enough  to 
eat,  or  at  least  never  enough  nutritious  food.  They 
indulged  in  chemical  products,  ersatz  food,  which 
gave  them  a  false  sense  of  satisfaction  for  a  time,  but 
no  red  corpuscles.  They  saw  their  children  withering, 
weakening.  In  the  poorer  classes  there  was  real  star- 
vation, and  the  women  and  children  were  victims  of 
tuberculosis  and  every  kind  of  illness  due  to  lack  of 
milk  and  fats.  Women  fainted  at  their  work.  A 
strange  drowsiness  crept  over  them,  so  that  working 
girls  would  drop  asleep  in  tramcars,  as  I  saw  them  after 
the  armistice,  through  sheer  anaemic  weakness.  For  the 
children  of  the  cities  the  last  two  years  of  war  and  the 
first  years  of  peace  were  doom  years.  They,  like  the 
babes  of  Vienna,  were  so  rickety  that  they  did  not  grow 
bones  in  their  bodies,  but  only  gristle. 

It  was  at  the  beginning  of  1916  that  the  pinch  began. 
By  October  of  1916,  when  the  milk  ordinances  were  in 
force,  most  cities  had  lost  their  last  chance  of  fat  suffi- 
ciency. German  scientists,  confirmed  by  British,  have 
worked  out  the  statistics  of  "calories"  required  for  a 
workingman  of  middle  weight  as  3,300  a  day. 

In  the  summer  of  1916  the  German  folk  were  reduced 
to  1,985  per  capitum.  In  the  winter  1916-17  they  were 
reduced  to  1,344,  ^^^  i^i  the  summer  of  1917  to  1,100. 
The  majority  of  the  German  folk  were  obliged  to  exist 
on  a  third  of  the  means  of  life  necessary  for  normal 
nourishment.  The  effect  on  childbirth  and  child  life 
was   devastating.     The   birth   rate  went   down   during 

136 


THE  NEW  GERMANY 

the  war  by  40  per  cent,  and  the  death  rate  of  children 
reached  sinister  figures. 

In  Prussia  50,391  children  between  one  and  fifteen 
years  of  age  died  in  191 8,  compared  with  27,730  in  the 
year  before  the  war.  In  Mecklenburg-Schwerin,  an 
agricultural  state,  819  children  died  in  1918,  compared 
with  360  in  1914.  Tuberculosis  ravaged  children  of 
all  ages,  as  well  as  adults,  mostly  women,  and  in  191 5 
there  were  61,000  deaths;  in  1916,  66,544;  i^i  1917,  87,032; 
and  in  191 8  over  97,000 — from  that  disease,  directly  due 
to  undernourishment. 

Almost  worse  than  the  deaths  was  the  weakness  of 
the  living,  thousands  of  children  crippled  for  life  by  hip 
and  joint  diseases,  and  so  weakened  for  life  by  the  hard- 
ships of  their  early  da^^s  that  in  1919  a  careful  analysis 
of  school  children  proved  that  60  per  cent  of  them  were 
from  one  and  a  half  to  two  years  underdeveloped,  accord- 
ing to  the  normal  standards  of  their  ages.  Even  in  this 
year  1921  the  percentage  of  children  underdeveloped  to 
that  extent  in  the  industrial  cities  remains  very  high. 

So  the  German  people  suffered,  and  the  worst  thing 
that  women  suffered,  and  many  men,  was  to  see  their 
children  weakening  and  dying,  or  never  gaining  in  health 
and  strength.  No  wonder,  poor  souls,  that  they  wished 
well  to  a  U-boat  war  which  should  break  the  blockade 
and  let  food  in,  did  not  cry  out  against  the  cruelty  even 
of  a  Lusitania  sinking  in  which  the  bodies  of  babes  were 
delivered  to  the  sea,  because  of  millions  of  German 
children  doomed  to  death  if  the  blockade  lasted  with 
its  deadly  grip  upon  German  life.  To  break  that  net 
anyhow,  by  any  violence,  by  any  cruelty,  was  justified 
in  the  souls  of  German  men  and  women  besieged  through 
the  years  of  war  and  watching  the  blight  upon  the 
children  they  had  brought  into  an  evil  world.  So,  if  I 
had  been  a  German  father,  I  should  have  thought,  and 
so  would  you,  I  guess,  who  read  this  book. 
10  137 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

When  the  armistice  was  made,  the  German  folk 
looked  for  reUef.  "At  last,"  they  said,  "the  blockade 
will  be  broken  and  our  children  saved!"  But  month 
after  month,  as  the  peace  treaty  was  being  drafted 
and  discussed  by  four  or  five  leisurely  and  self-interested 
men,  pleased  with  their  high  mission  to  alter  the  struc- 
ture of  European  geography  and  to  build  a  new  world, 
the  blockade  was  kept  tight,  and  month  after  month 
more  German  babies  died,  more  withered,  more  sickened 
with  horrible  disease.  "The  justice  of  God!"  said 
certain  pious  souls  in  England.  If  that  is  God's  jus- 
tice, it  is  not  pitiful.  But  it  is  man's  cruelty,  and  we 
cannot  shelter  ourselves  behind  the  back  of  God.  The 
German  folk  were  bitter  against  us  for  that.  I  think 
they  had  a  right  to  be  bitter,  and  that  the  verdict  of 
history  will  be  against  us  for  that.  We  had  beaten 
them  into  absolute  surrender.  Our  force  was  enough  to 
impose  our  terms  without  the  need  of  baby-starving. 
Nor  is  it  a  defense  to  say  that  the  Germans  would  have 
been  harsher  with  us  if  they  had  won.  Gentlemen 
do  not  regulate  their  conduct  by  the  standard  of  those 
whom  they  condemn  as  brutes,  or  should  not  do  so,  I 
imagine.  We  had  such  power  over  our  beaten  enemy 
that  we  could  have  forgone  the  privilege  of  cruelty  in 
that  and  other  things. 

There  was  one  thing  we  did  which  was  the  worst  form 
of  cruelty — cruelty  to  animals.  That  was  our  holding 
back  the  prisoners  of  war  a  year  and  more  after  the 
armistice.  Even  as  I  write  there  are  still  some  German 
prisoners  in  France,  serving  terms  of  punishment. 
Frightful!  It  was  justified  according  to  the  law,  utterly 
unjustified  in  human  psychology.  Imagine  those  poor 
wretches,  just  like  animals,  caged,  fed,  powerless  to 
resist  or  protest.  The  war  was  over  and  they  had  re- 
joiced at  its  ending.  The  war  had  finished  for  fighting 
men,  and  through  their  barbed-wire  cages  they  saw  ours 

138 


THE  NEW  GERMANY 

marching  for  home  again,  cheering,  joyous.  Month 
after  month  they  stayed  on,  sick  with  Heimtveh,  suf- 
fering torture  of  soul  for  their  own  women  and  babes.  In 
Germany  this  was  torture,  too.  I  saw  postcards  written 
to  the  caged  men  by  their  women  and  children.  "Why 
don't  you  come  home,  dear  father?  The  war  is  over. 
Why  do  the  EngHsh  still  keep  you  prisoners?"  They 
were  kept  as  hostages  of  German  surrender  until  some 
went  mad  and  tried  to  kill  themselves. 

Then  at  last,  in  the  autumn  of  19 19,  I  saw  them  going 
back,  trainloads  of  them,  passing  over  a  railway  bridge 
in  Cologne.  Each  train  was  decked  with  branches  of 
green  stuff;  from  every  window  the  liberated  prisoners 
leaned  out,  waving  red  flags  and  red  rags.  I  wondered 
at  the  reason  of  that  red  color.  Were  they  all  revolu- 
tionarists,  going  to  make  trouble  because  of  their  bitter- 
ness? The  people  of  Cologne  rushed  out  to  the  bridge 
to  cheer  them.  But  many  people  I  saw  could  not  cheer. 
They  burst  into  tears,  and  stood  there  weeping.  Those 
were  truckloads  of  human  tragedy,  a  year  late  for 
peace.  It  would  have  been  a  larger  thing  if  we  had  let 
them  go  before.  It  would  have  done  good,  and  no  harm, 
as  a  generous  act.  We  had  small  men,  with  small 
brains  and  small  hearts,  at  the  top  of  things. 

IV 

The  history  of  Germany  after  the  armistice  and  just 
before  was  a  strange  study  in  human  psychology.  Their 
"revolution"  was  the  mildest  thing  of  its  kind  ever 
known  in  the  turmoil  of  a  nations  ruin.  It  began  with 
a  mutiny  in  the  fleet  when  the  seamen  marched  from 
Kiel  with  the  red  flag,  gathering  adherents  of  soldiers, 
self-demobilized,  ruffians  liberated  from  prison,  and 
young  boys  eager  for  exciting  adventures  in  the  way  of 
shoplifting  and  looting.     Through  many  towns  marched 

139 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

this  horde  of  men  and  boys,  and  in  many  places  they 
suspended  the  Biir germeister y  disarmed  the  poUce,  and 
took  over  the  control  of  the  civic  administration  as  far 
as  occupying  the  city  halls  and  posting  revolutionary 
placards  on  walls  and  lamp-posts  where  we  read  them 
when  we  made  our  move  toward  the  Rhine.  Some 
clothing  stores  were  looted,  a  good  many  officers  were 
manhandled,  having  their  shoulder  straps  and  badges 
of  rank  torn  from  their  uniforms,  if  they  did  not  them- 
selves remove  those  symbols  of  authority,  which  most 
did,  in  a  fearful  way.  But  all  that  was  not  very  terri- 
ble, and  there  were  no  scenes  of  bloodshed  or  passion- 
ate cruelty.  Simultaneously  there  were  moving  back 
through  Germany  the  remnants  of  broken  armies, 
keeping  good  order,  marching  with  the  same  old  disci- 
pline, except  when,  at  each  town,  men  left  the  ranks, 
cut  off  their  badges  and  buttons,  and  returned  to  civil 
life.  The  home-coming  men  were  received  as  heroes 
by  their  folk.  They  were  heroes,  for  they  had  fought 
in  many  great  battles,  won  many  great  victories,  and 
had  been  defeated,  not  by  lack  of  courage — their  rear- 
guard resistance  had  been  stubborn  to  the  end — but 
by  their  own  dwindling  numbers  under  the  immense  and 
overwhelming  pressure  of  the  Allied  armies.  They 
were  garlanded  with  flowers  as  though  they  had  won 
the  war;  and  we  need  not  sneer  at  that,  but  rather 
admire  the  spirit  of  that  welcome  home  to  broken 
men. 

The  red-flag  columns,  looting  and  shouting  and 
playing  at  revolution,  were  not  very  terrible,  as  I  have 
said,  but  they  terrified  the  German  civilians,  who  shrank 
back  from  the  specter  of  anarchy  suggested  by  these 
demonstrations.  Far  greater  was  their  dread  of  Bolshe- 
vism than  of  Allied  troops  about  to  occupy  the  Rhine 
towns.  It  is  indeed  a  fact  that  they  looked  for  our 
army  with  anxious  expectation,  as  guardians  of  law  and 

140 


THE  NEW  GERMANY 

order.  From  Cologne,  in  which  the  revolutionary 
seamen  had  played  their  usual  farce,  came  an  urgent 
request  that  our  troops  should  occupy  the  city  before 
schedule  time,  and  when  our  first  patrols  of  cavalry, 
which  I  accompanied,  entered  the  Dom-Platz,  they 
were  received  not  as  enemies,  but  as  friends.  Strange 
paradox,  but  easily  understood  by  those  who  knew  the 
German  dread  of  anarchy,  their  instinctive  and  in- 
herited traditions  of  civic  discipline,  and  their  immense 
relief  that  the  drain  of  German  blood  had  stopped  at 
last. 

The  flight  of  the  Kaiser  and  the  proclamation  of  the 
Republic  comprised  the  German  revolution  over  the 
whole  territory  of  the  old  Empire,  except  in  Berlin, 
where  there  was  some  short  and  desperate  street  fight- 
ing, not  between  supporters  of  the  old  regime  and  the 
new  Republicans,  but  between  the  new  Republicans  and 
the  communists,  or  Spartacists  as  they  called  them- 
selves, with  Bolshevik  ideals,  under  the  leadership  of 
Karl  Liebknecht.  A  Provisional  Government  had  been 
form.ed  by  Liberal  and  Moderate  Socialists,  of  whom 
the  chiefs  were  Ebert,  Scheidemann,  and  Erzberger, 
with  Doctor  Solf  as  Foreign  Minister.  In  the  background 
were  the  Junkers  and  the  old  imperial  bureaucracy, 
lying  low,  watching  events  with  an  anxiety  that  was 
gradually  allayed  when  they  realized  that  the  German 
people  were  not  out  for  anarchy,  nor  for  vengeance 
against  their  old  leaders,  but  in  a  vast  majority  were 
hostile  to  the  small  bodies  of  Spartacists.  It  was  also 
made  clear  by  Scheidemann  and  his  colleagues  (men 
who  had  been  loyal  throughout  the  war  and  stanch 
supporters  of  every  act  of  military  autocracy,  in  spite 
of  a  thin  camouflage  of  democratic  protest)  that  they 
were  determined  to  establish  the  Republic  on  the  old 
traditions  of  imperialism  without  the  Emperor,  or  at 
least  as  protectors  of  capital  and  buorgeois  interests. 

141 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

The  military  leaders  [says  an  eyewitness  of  the  revolution  (my 
friend  Percy  Brown,  in  his  valuable  book,  Germany  in  Dissolution)] 
were  at  a  loss.  They  had  expected  the  long-suffering  masses  to 
turn  savagely  on  their  late  masters.  Hundreds  of  high  officers  had 
fled  the  country  to  find  that  peace  and  defeat  had  found  Germany 
merely  bewildered,  without  a  sign  of  revengeful  temper.  They 
found  the  sailors,  the  only  people  who  really  revolted,  offering  to 
protect  the  property  of  the  wealthy  until  order  was  restored!  If 
the  General  Staff  had  had  any  sort  of  a  plan  by  which  they  could 
have  saved  their  faces,  they  could  have  suppressed  the  revolutionary 
movement  as  easily  and  as  completely  as  they  have  kept  the  people 
down  since  Bismarck  showed  them  the  way. 

Karl  Liebknecht  and  his  revolutionary  companion, 
Rosa  Luxemburg,  as  the  leaders  of  the  Spartacist 
groups,  the  only  people  who  believed  in  a  real  revolution 
of  the  laboring  masses  against  the  forces  of  capital 
and  of  bourgeoisie,  m  the  true  style  of  Lenin,  were 
feared  "worse  than  the  plague,"  says  the  writer  I  have 
already  quoted.  They  organized  revolutionary  out- 
breaks and  took  forcible  possession  of  the  Vorzvdrts 
and  other  newspaper  offices.  They  were  given  short 
shrift  by  the  Green  Guards,  or  military  police,  of  Berlin, 
under  the  command  of  Noske,  who  had  the  brain  and 
temper  of  a  Prussian  general.  With  field  artillery  and 
machine  guns,  flame  throwers  and  bombs,  the  govern- 
ment forces  surrounded  the  Spartacist  strongholds  and 
shot  their  defenders  to  pieces.  Karl  Liebknecht  and 
Rosa  Luxemburg,  who  had  believed  in  the  quick  success 
of  the  insurrection  against  the  Provisional  Government 
in  Berlin,  had  been  trying  to  rally  up  the  provinces. 
They  remained  in  hiding  after  the  collapse  of  their 
comrades  in  Berlin,  until  captured  by  a  trick  of  Noske's 
officers.  On  their  way  to  prison  they  were  brutally 
murdered.  The  ''revolution"  was  at  an  end,  except 
for  sporadic  outbursts  of  a  feeble  kind  here  and  there. 
It  was  no  revolution  at  all,  in  the  old  sense  of  the  word. 
No  wild  wave  of  fury  swept  over  the  German  people 

142 


THE  NEW  GERMANY 

because  of  the  ruin  and  defeat  into  which  they  had  been 
led  by  their  rulers.  There  was  no  bloody  vengeance 
against  the  military  and  aristocratic  caste  which  had 
used  the  bodies  of  humble  men  as  gun  fodder  for  their 
imperial  ambitions,  and  poisoned  their  very  souls  by 
a  damnable  philosophy  of  militarism,  and  for  years  had 
disciplined  them  brutally  into  servitude.  No  red 
flames  made  bonfires  of  the  country  houses  into  which  the 
Junkers  had  slunk  sulkily.  Ludendorff  and  Von  Tirpitz 
did  not  dangle  from  the  crossbars  of  German  lamp- 
posts, nor  any  other  men  whose  arrogant  conceit  had 
brought  their  country  into  the  deep  gulfs  of  ruin,  playing 
like  gamblers  with  the  fate  of  an  empire,  and  then, 
when  they  lost,  blaming  the  people  who  were  victims 
of  this  insanity.  The  Allied  peoples  would  have  been 
more  satisfied  with  the  sincerity  of  a  "change  of  heart" 
among  the  German  folk  if  some  of  their  chief  thugs  had 
been  slit  from  ear  to  ear,  if  there  had  been  something 
in  the  Russian  style,  which  they  deplored  in  Russia  but 
desired  in  Germany.  Not  a  bloodthirsty  man  myself,  I 
am  tempted  by  the  thought  that  it  would  have  been 
well  if  the  high  military  caste  and  the  Junkers  of  the 
old  regime  had  been  swept  out  of  the  country  by  their 
own  folk  under  a  sentence  of  lifelong  banishment.  It 
would  have  helped  the  world  forward,  and  German 
democracy  could  have  claimed  greater  generosity  from 
the  peoples  of  other  nations. 

The  German  people  whom  I  met  after  the  armistice 
were  stupefied  by  the  immense  surrender  of  all  their 
old  pride,  and  bewildered  by  the  uncertain  future  ahead 
of  them.  I  could  find  no  hate  in  them  for  the  English, 
and  no  hate  for  the  authors  of  their  own  tragedy.  For  the 
Kaiser  they  had  no  passionate  enthusiasm,  but  a  little 
pity,  a  little  contempt,  and  a  latent  sentiment  which 
they  could  not  annul.  They  did  not,  and  do  not,  believe 
that  he  "willed  the  war."     They  regarded  him  as  a 

143 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

figurehead  used  by  the  German  High  Command,  and 
a  lover  of  peace.  Out  of  the  depths  of  their  ruin  they 
remembered  him  in  the  old  days  of  German  splendor 
and  success,  a  fine  personality,  the  head  of  the  iiouse 
of  HohenzoUern,  which  was  identified  with  the  glory  of 
Prussia  and  the  Empire.  They  would  not  fight  to  get 
him  back,  they  did  not  yearn  to  have  him  back,  but 
they  had  no  grudge  against  him.  So  also  it  was  with 
Hindenburg,  who,  unlike  LudendorfF — unpopular  every- 
where— remained  with  the  armies  to  the  end  and  asso- 
ciated himself  with  the  German  people  in  defeat  as  well 
as  in  victory.  His  soldiers  remembered  the  magic  of 
his  name  when  he  had  directed  them  to  victory.  Other 
generals  also,  the  commanders  in  the  field,  received 
that  tribute  of  remembrance  which  softened  the  charge 
against  them  of  reckless  leadership  to  ruin.  The 
"revolution,"  therefore,  was  not  one  of  popular  fury 
or  vengeance.  The  very  magnitude  of  their  disaster 
united  the  German  people  for  self-preservation  after 
the  war,  and  they  saw  clearly  that  disunion,  anarchy, 
would  lead  them  into  deeper  and  blacker  pits  of  ruin. 
That  fear  of  anarchy  to  an  order-loving  people,  long 
trained  in  the  philosophy  of  bourgoise  life,  protection 
of  property,  industry,  commerce,  was  the  dominant 
thought  of  the  masses  of  German  folk,  overwhelming 
all  other  instincts.  .  .  .  And  always  Russia  was  a 
ghastly  warning. 

So  they  supported  Ebert,  Scheidemann,  and  the 
moderate  program  of  the  Majority  Socialists,  with 
their  allegiance  to  bureaucratic  traditions  and  govern- 
mental authority.  Later  they  swung  more  and  more 
to  the  Right  rather  than  to  the  Left,  to  the  Deutsches 
Folkspartei  with  its  imperial  convictions,  and  to  even 
more  reactionary  groups.  That  was  when  the  Treaty 
of  Versailles  was  revealed  in  the  full  measure  of  its 
severity    and    ruthlessness,     and     when     French    and 

144 


THE  NEW  GERMANY 

British  opinion,  especially  the  opinion  of  French  and 
British  newspapers,  convinced  the  German  people 
.that  they  were  still  regarded  as  outside  the  pale  of 
civilization,  could  hope  for  no  generosity,  for  no  mercy, 
for  no  fair  play,  even,  from  the  Allied  Powers  and  their 
Supreme  Council.  Under  the  goad  of  constant  in- 
sults— still  called  "Huns"  and  "Boches, "  liars  and 
monsters — and  under  the  menace  of  military  "sanc- 
tions," and  in  the  grip  still  of  that  blockade  by  starva- 
tion, the  German  spirit  which  had  been  ready  for  demo- 
cratic union  with  other  peoples  in  the  League  of  Nations 
and  for  liberation  from  its  old  traditions,  reacted  and 
hardened  and  was  filled  with  bitterness. 

Their  revolution  had  been  real  to  a  degree  which 
we  do  not  even  yet  admit.  It  had  replaced  the  Emperor 
by  Ebert  the  tailor,  and  all  the  other  kings  of  Germany 
had  fled.  More  than  that,  it  did  represent  a  great 
change  in  the  moral  and  spiritual  outlook  of  the  German 
people.  Gone  were  the  arrogant  officers  swaggering 
along  the  sidewalks  and  thrusting  civilians  to  the  gutter. 
Gone  was  all  the  military  pomp  and  pride  which  had 
assumed  so  great  a  place  in  their  national  life.  The 
immensity  of  their  losses  in  men  and  wealth,  the  stag- 
gering figures  of  their  national  debts,  the  inevitability 
and  enormity  of  the  price  they  would  have  to  pay, 
shocked  the  soul  of  Germany  to  its  innermost  recesses, 
uprooted  the  very  foundations  of  their  old  faith,  and 
gave  them  an  entirely  new  vision  regarding  their  past 
history  and  their  future  place.  I  am  convinced  from 
all  I  heard  in  Germany  after  the  armistice — though  at 
that  time  my  observation  was  limited  to  the  occupied 
zone — that  the  German  people  would  have  responded 
eagerly  and  thankfully  to  any  touch  of  chivalry  and  to 
any  conviction  of  real  justice.  They  did  not  want  to 
avoid  punishment,  but  they  hoped,  these  men  and 
women  who  were  victims  of  war,  that  it  would  not  be 

H5 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

greater  than  human  nature  itself  could  bear  without 
revolt,  nor  so  cruel  and  vindictive  as  to  reduce  them  to 
despair.  President  Wilson  had  made  great  promises  to 
democracy  in  his  Fourteen  Points,  and  he  had  included 
the  German  people  in  his  pledges  if  they  got  rid  of  their 
old  rulers  and  established  a  democratic  government. 
Well,  the  German  people  had  proclaimed  their  Repub- 
lic, and  Ebert  the  tailor  was  their  President,  and  it 
was  stable  and  lasting  and  free  from  anarchy.  They  had 
fulfilled  their  part  and  shared  the  hopes  of  the  peoples 
in  open  covenants  openly  arrived  at,  and  the  self- 
determination  of  nations.  There  were  mass  meetings 
in  Berlin,  with  great  placards  on  which  was  written 
"Give  us  the  Fourteen  Points!"  But  they,  like  all 
the  world,  saw  that  the  peace  treaty  did  not  fulfill  those 
promises,  and  carved  up  Europe  regardless  of  racial 
boundaries  and  economic  sense.  Vienna  was  condemned 
to  death.  The  independence  of  Poland  was  created 
at  the  expense  of  large  German  populations  placed  under 
Polish  domination.  Germans  and  Austrians  in  the 
Tyrol  were  handed  over  to  Italy.  And  in  every  clause 
of  the  peace  treaty  the  German  people  saw  themselves 
doomed,  as  they  believed  sincerely,  though  erroneously, 
I  think,  to  an  industrial  and  commercial  servitude  which 
would  deprive  them  for  generations  to  come  of  all 
profit  out  of  their  own  labor,  and  all  hope  of  recovery. 
Worse  to  them  even  than  that  pronouncement  of  doom 
were  the  menaces  by  which  it  was  accompanied.  English 
newspapers,  which  had  cried  out  to  God  for  vengeance 
against  the  "Hun"  who  sent  aircraft  to  bomb  defense- 
less cities,  advocated  the  bombing  of  German  cities,  if 
the  representatives  of  Germany  refused  to  sign  the 
terms  of  peace.  "Strong  Allied  airdromes  on  the 
Rhine  and  in  Poland,"  wrote  the  Evening  News,  "well 
equipped  with  the  best  machines  and  pilots,  could  quickly 
persuade  the   injiabitants   of  the   large   German  cities 

146 


THE  NEW  GERMANY 

of  the  folly  of  having  refused  to  sign  the  peace.  Those 
considerations  are  elementary.  For  that  reason  they 
may  be  overlooked.     They  are  milk  for  babes." 

That  last  sentence  was  a  sneer  against  certain  senti- 
mentalists in  England  who  desired  to  raise  the  blockade 
and  allow  German  babies  to  get  some  milk.  But  to 
enforce  the  terms  of  peace,  if  refusal  were  contemplated, 
German  babies  and  German  women  were  to  be  blown 
to  bits  in  large  numbers  as  a  means  of  persuasion  to 
their  statesmen.  The  German  women  and  children, 
indeed,  were  to  be  the  victims  of  our  policy  of  enforcing 
the  peace,  in  any  case,  and  so  it  happened.  The  Junkers 
were  still  well  fed  in  their  country  houses.  LudendorfF 
did  not  go  without  his  meals.  Von  Tirpitz  did  not 
have  to  swallow  his  whiskers.  It  was  the  women  and 
children,  overcrowded  in  tenement  houses,  dying  of 
tuberculosis,  ravaged  by  rickets,  who  were  made  the 
hostages  of  the  German  government.  As  pointed  out 
by  Mr.  Norman  Angell  in  his  book,  The  Fruits  of  Vic- 
tory^ Mr.  Winston  Churchill  described  the  character  of 
the  blockade  when  speaking  in  the  House  of  Commons 
on  March  3,  1919. 

"This  weapon  of  starvation  falls  mainly  on  the  women 
and  children,  upon  the  old  and  the  weak  and  the  poor, 
after  all  the  fighting  has  stopped."  And  then  he  added, 
not  a  plea  for  mercy,  but  the  cold  statement  that  we 
were  enforcing  the  blockade  with  vigor,  and  would 
continue  to  do  so. 

Mr.  Norman  Angell  is  not  going  beyond  the  bounds 
of  justice  when  he  shows  the  utter  lack  of  connection 
m  the  public  mind  or  conscience  between  our  foreign 
policy  and  the  famine  in  Europe. 

This  was  revealed  in  a  curious  way  at  the  time  of  the  signature 
of  the  Treaty.  At  the  gathering  of  the  representatives  the  German 
delegate  spoke  sitting  down.  It  turned  out  afterward  that  he  was 
so  ill  and  distraught  that  he  dared  not  trust  himself  to  stand  up. 

147 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

Every  paper  was  full  of  the  incident,  as  also  that  the  paper-cutter  in 
front  of  him  on  the  table  was  found  afterward  to  be  broken;  that  he 
placed  his  gloves  upon  the  copy  of  the  Treaty,  and  that  he  had  not 
thrown  away  his  cigarette  on  entering  the  room.  These  were  the 
offenses  which  prompted  the  Daily  Mail  to  say:  "After  this 
no  one  will  treat  the  Hun  as  civilized  or  repentant."  Almost  the 
entire  Press  rang  with  the  story  of  "Rantzau's  insult."  But  not 
one  paper,  so  far  as  I  could  discover,  paid  any  attention  to  what 
Rantzau  had  said.     He  said: 

"I  do  not  want  to  answer  by  reproaches  to  reproaches.  .  .  . 
Crimes  in  war  may  not  be  excusable,  but  they  are  committed  in 
the  struggle  for  victory  and  in  the  defense  of  national  existence,  and 
passions  are  aroused  which  make  the  conscience  of  peoples  blunt. 
The  hundreds  of  thousands  of  noncombatants  who  have  perished 
since  November  nth  by  reason  of  the  blockades  were  killed  with 
cold  deliberation,  after  our  adversaries  had  conquered  and  victory 
had  been  assured  them.  Think  of  that  when  you  speak  of  guilt 
and  punishment." 

No  one  seems  to  have  noticed  this  trifle  in  presence  of  the  hei- 
nousness  of  the  cigarette,  the  glove,  and  the  other  crimes.  Yet  this 
was  an  insult  indeed.  If  true,  it  shamefully  disgraced  England — 
if  England  is  responsible.  The  public,  presumably,  did  not  care 
whether  it  was  true  or  not. 

It  is,  of  course,  certain  that  after  the  signature  of  the 
terms  of  peace  the  German  officials  delayed  the  fulfill- 
ment of  its  provisions,  did  all  in  their  power  to  post- 
pone some  of  its  exactions,  failed,  not  perhaps  delib- 
erately (because  of  the  weakness  of  undernourished 
workmen),  to  make  full  deliveries  of  coal,  and  in  the 
figures  presented  to  the  Allied  experts  from  time  to 
time,  underestimated  the  taxable  wealth  of  Germany 
and  her  industrial  possibilities.  That  was  inevitable 
and  natural.  Even  people  condemned  to  death  do  not 
slip  the  noose  gratefully  upon  their  own  necks  and  ask 
to  be  called  early  for  execution.  With  regard  to  figures, 
no  amount  of  anxiety  for  arithmetical  accuracy  could 
prevent  a  wide  difference  of  calculation  between  German 
and  Allied  experts,  both  of  whom  were,  and  still  are, 
without  exact  evidence  as  to  the  possibilities  of  German 

148 


THE  NEW  GERMANY 

industrial  and  commercial  development  upon  which 
the  payments  of  indemnities  depend.  The  factors 
were  then,  and  still  are,  uncertain.  They  depend  upon 
the  capacity  of  other  countries  to  buy  German  goods, 
upon  the  future  of  Russia,  the  value  of  the  German 
mark,  the  policy  of  the  United  States  regarding 
credits,  the  attitude  of  France  regarding  Westphalia 
and  Siberia,  the  good  or  bad  behavior  of  the  Poles, 
the  health  and  energy  of  German  workmen,  the  reason 
or  madness  of  the  Supreme  Council  and  Allied  politicians, 
— all  very  unstable  and  incalculable  quantities  upon 
which  to  base  an  estimate  of  German  wealth.  Naturally 
the  German  experts  presented  figures  which  opposed 
those  of  the  Allied  experts.  That  was  not  a  crime.  It 
was  not  even  insincerity.  It  was  a  psychological  in- 
evitability. Yet  we  made  a  crime  of  it,  and  French 
and  British  newspapers  flamed  into  passion  against  the 
"insults"  of  the  German  offers.  "They  will  cheat  you 
yet,  those  Junkers!"  They  were  proclaimed  to  be 
"ridiculous  and  insulting"  in  the  French  Press,  before 
ever  they  had  been  received  in  Paris.  All  German 
offers,  even  to  reconstruct  the  devastated  territories, 
were  denounced  as  "the  deliberate  evasion  of  solemn 
pledges,"  and  the  months  dragged  on,  and  the  years, 
while  "the  fruits  of  victory"  were  counted  on  un- 
planted  trees,  and  could  not  be  harvested. 


In  the  Allied  countries  men  who  called  themselves 
statesmen  and  were  mostly  little  pettifogging  politi- 
cians worrying  about  their  own  places  and  prestige  and 
public  favor,  proclaimed  the  most  fantastic  promises 
to  their  peoples  about  making  Germany  "pay."  The 
Germans  were  to  be  made  to  pay  all  the  war  costs  of 
all  the  Allied  nations,  including  pensions.     When  one 

149 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

sets  out  the  simple  fact  again  that  England  in  four 
and  a  half  years  of  war  spent  as  much  as  in  two  and  a 
half  centuries  before,  it  is  self-evident  that  no  one  nation, 
not  even  Germany,  which  had  also  exhausted  her  re- 
sources by  the  same  supreme  effort  in  destructive  energy, 
could  pay  back  all  that  expenditure  of  all  the  Allied 
nations,  nor  any  great  part  of  it.  Yet  the  politicians 
promised,  and  knew  that  they  lied.  They  promised 
in  order  to  keep  their  people  quiet.  They  promised 
to  get  the  people's  votes,  but  presently  the  time  came 
when  the  people  became  impatient  and  full  of  wrath — 
especially  the  French  people,  who  had  suffered  most 
and  had  been  promised  most,  and  looked  out  upon  their 
ravaged  lands.  In  April  of  1921  the  Bill  of  Costs  was 
at  last  presented  to  Germany.  After  many  rejected 
offers  from  the  German  experts  the  indemnities  were 
fixed  at  figures  below  those  regarded  as  a  minimum  in 
Paris,  but  so  enormous  that  the  figures  meant  nothing 
to  the  minds  of  people  unused  to  the  arithmetic  of  inter- 
national finance,  and  were  incalculable  in  their  effect 
upon  the  world's  markets  even  to  financial  experts. 
In  the  Paris  Resolutions,  afterward  modified  a  little  in 
method  of  payment,  the  Germans  were  called  upon  to 
pay  226  miUiards  of  gold  marks,  spread  over  a  period 
covering   forty-two  years,  in  the  following  sums: 


Years 


Amounts 


1921-22. 
1923-25. 
1926-28. 
1929-31. 
1932-62, 


2  milliards  of  gold  marks,  annually 
.         ((         <<      <<        <(  << 


4 
6 


At  the  time  of  the  presentation  of  this  Bill  of  Costs 
it  required  fifteen  German  paper  marks  to  make  one 
gold  mark,  and  it  was  of  course  obvious  that  apart  from 
ft  transfer  of  currency  insignificant  compared  with  the 

150 


THE  NEW  GERMANY 

total  bill,  and  by  a  transfer  of  credits  and  securities  of 
very  little  value,  owing  to  Germany's  financial  condi- 
tion after  war,  the  only  method  of  payment  would  be 
by  exports  of  merchandise,  mainly  in  the  form  of  manu- 
factured articles. 

In  order  to  cover  their  own  national  expenses  and  pay 
the  reparations  demanded,  the  Germans  would  have  to 
increase  their  exports  by  at  least  five  times  the  prewar 
figures,  exceeding  the  combined  total  exportation  of 
manufactured  goods  by  America  and  England.  To 
achieve  such  a  vast  increase  in  exports  after  a  devastat- 
ing and  ruinous  war,  the  loss  of  colonies  and  ships,  the 
slaughter  of  two  million  men,  the  undernourishment 
of  many  laborers  during  the  years  of  war,  the  deteriora- 
tion of  machinery  and  rolling  stock,  and  the  heavy 
taxation  of  capital,  would  require  an  industrial  effort 
amounting  to  the  miraculous.  If  it  were  achieved, 
Germany  would  capture  the  world's  trade  and  kill 
the  exports  of  many  competing  nations,  including 
England  and  the  United  States,  but  at  the  cost,  perhaps, 
of  her  own  well-being,  owing  to  the  necessity  of  low 
wages,  severe  restriction  of  food  imports,  and  the  enor- 
mous taxation  upon  all  that  terrific  energy. 

It  was  impossible  for  the  average  German  to  say 
whether  such  an  adventure  in  arithmetic  were  humanly 
possible  or  not.  Presented  with  the  figures,  he  was 
stunned  by  their  enormity  and  believed  that  acceptance 
would  involve  his  people  in  a  life  of  slavery  for  genera- 
tions to  come.  He  was  tempted  to  repudiate  them  and 
let  happen  what  would  happen.  The  German  govern- 
ment under  Doctor  Simon  resigned  rather  than  sign.  It 
seemed  doubtful  whether  any  government  could  be 
found  to  sign.  Days  passed,  and  no  government  was 
found  to  accept  the  humiHating  task,  while  the  date  of 
the  ultimatum  fast  approached. 

As  it  approached,  passion  rose  high  in  France;  the 

151 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

French  people,  with  some  exceptional  groups,  were 
enraged  with  the  delay  in  getting  their  fruits  of  victory, 
any  fruit.  "Make  them  pay!"  was  the  shout  of  the 
French  masses,  led  by  the  French  newspapers,  and 
echoed,  more  doubtfully,  in  England,  Aristide  Briand, 
Prime  Minister  of  France,  promised  to  make  them  pay 
by  sending  "the  gendarme  to  put  his  hand  on  the  collar 
of  the  debtor  to  collect  the  debt."  His  gendarme  was 
the  1919  class  of  twenty-two-year-old  youths,  whom  he 
called  to  the  colors  and  sent  up  to  the  Rhine,  ready  to 
march  into  Westphaha,  or  the  Ruhr,  as  it  was  called, 
and  seize  the  German  industrial  cities  Hke  Essen,  Elber- 
feld,  and  others,  with  their  chief  coal  fields  and  factories, 
in  lieu  of  payment.  By  such  an  act  they  would  have 
crippled  Germany,  but  also  they  would  have  lost  the 
greater  part  of  their  indemnities,  too.  And  by  such  an 
act  they  would  have  insured  another  war  for  another 
generation  of  French  and  German  youth,  without  any 
manner  of  doubt.  But  a  fev/  dcLys  before  the  ultimatum 
expired,  a  new  Chancellor,  Doctor  Wirth,  found  a  gov- 
ernment which  agreed  to  sign.  And  the  terms  to 
which  his  signature  was  written  as  a  solemn  pledge  were 
read  out  by  him  in  a  deadly  silence  of  the  Reichstag. 
Germany  had  promised  to  pay,  and  thereto  had 
pHghted  her  faith,  as  far  as  human  possibility. 

VI 

It  was  not  long  after  that  pledge  was  made  that  I 
went  to  Berlin  to  study  the  conditions  of  life  in  Germany, 
and  to  get  some  clear  idea,  by  diligent  inquiry  of  many 
minds,  upon  the  possibility  of  payment  and  the  chance 
of  the  future  in  Germany. 

Apart  altogether  from  information  I  obtained  from 
German  bankers,  business  men,  political  leaders,  and 
ordinary  citizens,   checked,   but   mostly  confirmed,   by 

152 


THE  NEW  GERMANY 

our  own  financial  experts,  and  by  one  very  wise  Amer- 
ican— Raymond  Swing  of  the  New  York  Herald — my 
personal  observations  of  Berlin  life  showed  me  in  a 
very  few  days  that  a  remarkable  change  had  come  over 
the  spirit  and  conditions  of  the  people  during  the  time 
that  had  followed  the  war  and  the  defeat.  There  in 
Berlin,  and  in  other  cities  through  which  I  passed,  the 
people  were  no  longer  dejected  and  despairing.  Most 
of  them,  the  ordinary  citizens,  were  wonderfully  cheer- 
ful. Something  had  happened  to  brace  them  up,  to 
make  them  keen,  to  give  them  a  resolute  and  confident 
purpose.  It  was  easy  to  see  what  had  happened.  It 
was  work.  Everybody  who  could  get  any  kind  of  job 
was  working  at  high  pressure  and  with  enthusiasm.  A 
peculiar  phenomenon  in  Europe  after  war! 

I  had  just  left  England  and  London,  in  the  time  of 
the  coal  strike  and  of  the  greatest  trade  slump  in  our 
modern  history,  when  the  streets  of  the  poorer  districts 
Vv^ere  thronged  with  listless,  workless  men,  hanging  round 
the  labor  exchanges  to  get  their  government  "doles," 
or  rattling  collecting  boxes  in  the  faces  of  the  passers-by. 
Everywhere  in  London  then,  and  in  other  cities,  one 
noticed  slackness  in  the  mental  attitude  of  men,  working 
or  not  working.  They  were  not  keen  on  their  jobs. 
They  were  lazy  or  "tired."  The  laboring  men  in  trade 
unions  were  deliberately  limiting  their  output,  so  that 
to  watch,  as  some  days  I  watched,  bricklayers  building 
new  houses,  was  a  mixture  of  tragedy  and  comedy — 
comedy  because  of  their  Pavlova-like  attitudes  with 
hods  and  ladders,  their  languorous  way  with  bricks 
and  mortar,  their  frequent  rests  between  the  exertion 
of  squaring  one  brick  and  another,  their  long  and  careful 
lighting  of  pipes,  their  eloquence  and  argument  among 
one  another  as  to  the  right  thing  to  do,  if  ever  it  were 
done;  and  tragedy  because  of  this  object  lesson  in  the 
way  to  lose  our  chance  of  recovery.  ...  In  Hyde 
11  153 


MORE  THAT  MUST   BE  TOLD 

Park  of  an  afternoon  I  saw  always  immense  numbers 
of  men  reading  newspapers,  or  dozing  in  the  sunshine, 
or  staring  idly  at  the  passers-by.  They  seemed  to  have 
no  work  to  do,  and  to  have  no  desire  for  it. 

In  Berlin  it  was  different.  There  was  no  lounging 
during  work  hours.  Crowds  of  young  men  and  women 
were  hurrying  about,  intent  on  some  kind  of  business. 
Even  in  the  hotels,  the  men  who  made  a  continual 
traffic  from  entrance  hall  to  the  rooms  were  not  there 
for  idle  pastime  or  amorous  dalliance.  They  came  with 
little  black  satchels  under  their  arms,  stuffed  with 
papers,  and,  sitting  in  groups,  discussed  estimates, 
offers,  exports,  prices,  all  kinds  of  business.  They 
seemed  to  be  doing  well,  doing,  at  least,  a  lot  of  business, 
whatever  their  profits  might  be.  These  crowds  in  the 
streets  of  Berlin  were  obviously  satisfied  with  the  way 
things  were  going  with  their  own  affairs.  There  was 
no  hangdog  look  about  them,  but  alertness  of  look. 
Their  clothes  were  rather  shabby.  I  noticed  a  good 
many  men  of  the  working  classes  still  wearing  their 
old  field-gray  jackets  without  badge  or  shoulder  straps 
— three  years  after  war — and  the  German  women  had 
not  the  chic  touch  of  French  or  English  women,  but 
they  were  clean  and  neat  and  good  to  see  if  they  were 
pretty.  The  war  strain  seemed  to  have  been  lifted 
from  them.  Hunger  no  longer  gnawed  at  them.  It 
was  clear  to  see  that  hundreds  of  thousands  of  Berlin 
folk  not  only  had  enough  for  the  necessities  of  life,  but 
a  little  margin  beyond  that  for  the  good  fun  of  life  in 
hours  of  leisure  after  a  working  day. 

I  went  one  evening  with  a  British  officer,  two  German 
bankers — and  brothers — and  a  German  lady  to  Luna 
Park,  one  of  the  popular  joy  places  of  Berlin.  An 
immense  place  of  plaster  buildings,  fantastic  as  a  futur- 
ist nightmare,  it  has  a  vast  outdoor  restaurant  built  in 
a  series  of  terraces  around  the  arena  where  at  night 

154 


THE  NEW  GERMANY 

there  are  fireworks  displays  and  always  a  band  playing 
gay  music  before  a  painted  scene  of  wild  and  whirling 
women.  The  outdoor  restaurant  holds  fifty  thousand 
people,  and  on  the  evening  I  went,  typical,  I  was  told, 
of  any  other  evening,  there  was  hardly  a  vacant  place. 
I  watched  all  these  people  curiously,  and  one  of  the 
German  bankers  smiled  at  me  and  said,  "Do  they  look 
Hke  barbarians — the  Huns?"  They  were  a  vast  crowd 
of  bourgeoisie — clerks,  shopgirls,  working-class  fam- 
ilies, respectable  middle-class  men  and  women  with 
their  children.  It  was  a  hot  evening,  and  all  the  girls 
were  in  light  cotton  frocks,  with  very  httle  underneath, 
I  guess.  "Cheap  stuff,"  said  the  German  lady  by  my 
side,  "but  easily  made  and  good  to  wash."  Every- 
body was  drinking  light  beer  or  coff'ee,  or  sipping  iced 
drinks,  or  eating  ices.  I  reckoned  that  it  would  cost 
them  about  five  to  ten  marks  a  head,  fivepence  to  ten- 
pence  in  English  money,  ten  cents  to  twenty  in  American 
money.  There  was  no  rowdyism,  no  drunkenness.  I 
only  saw  one  policeman  in  the  great  crowds,  and  he  was 
not  required  by  people  who  were  enjoying  themselves 
in  a  cheerful,  orderly  way.  The  side-shows,  with  special 
entrance  fees,  were  crammed.  People  were  wasting 
paper  marks  in  lotteries  for  chocolate  and  bottles  of 
scent,  spending  paper  marks  freely  on  "flip-flaps'* 
and  "wiggly-woggles"  and  scenic  railways. 

"How  is  it,"  I  said,  "that  all  these  people  have  so 
much  money  to  spend?  I  cannot  understand  it,  after 
an  inquiry  into  the  wages  of  clerks  and  shopgirls — 
seven  hundred  and  fifty  marks  a  month  for  clerks, 
much  less  than  that  for  shopgirls,  and  the  mark  worth 
no  more  than  twopence  in  purchasing  power,  even 
within  Germany,  and  half  that  in  foreign  exchange." 

"Frankly,  I  cannot  understand  it,  either,"  said  the 
German  lady.  "I  would  like  to  tell  you  that  this  place 
gives  you  a  false  idea  of  our  prosperity,  and  that  there 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

is  terrible  poverty  in  the  working  districts.  That  would 
not  be  quite  true.  There  is  terrible  poverty,  still,  as  in 
all  great  cities  of  Germany,  but  this  scene  is  typical 
of  many  others.  It  shows  that  millions  of  people  have 
a  little  money  to  spend  on  pleasure." 

She  thought  out  an  explanation.  I  think  it  was  a 
sound  one.  "It  is  like  this.  A  single  girl,  or  young 
man,  having  to  live  on  what  she  or  he  earns  alone,  has 
a  hard  struggle.  It  is  almost  impossible  to  live  on  seven 
hundred  and  fifty  marks  a  month.  The  cheapest  shirt 
costs  fifty  marks;  a  pair  of  boots  two  hundred  and  fifty; 
the  simplest,  cheapest  meal  in  a  restaurant  twenty 
marks,  and  then  not  enough  for  health  and  strength. 
But  families  pool  their  earnings.  If  there  are  two  or 
three  sisters  and  a  brother  all  working  and  living  at 
home  with  a  father  and  mother  getting  good  wages, 
then  there  is  a  margin  for  pleasure  like  this.  They 
stint  and  scrape  at  home,  where  they  live  over- 
crowded, in  order  to  come  out  in  the  evenings  and 
enjoy  themselves.  They  must  have  this  kind  of 
pleasure — fresh  air,  music,  cheerful  company,  the  joy 
of  youth.  There  is  too  much  love  of  pleasure,  and 
it  leads  to  immorality.  Young  girls  will  sell  them- 
selves for  a  pretty  frock  or  a  night  of  dancing.  The 
war  loosened  the  old  moralities.  Youth  is  enormously 
tempted. " 

After  that  evening  in  Luna  Park,  I  went  to  an  office 
in  BerHn  which  has  to  do  with  the  feeding  of  destitute 
children  by  German  charity.  It  was  a  German  lady 
who  gave  me  some  information  about  the  state  of  child 
life  in  Berlin.  She  was  a  young  woman,  with  the  fine 
gold-spun  hair  of  the  prettiest  type  of  Prussian  girl,  and 
blue  eyes.  I  guessed  by  her  manner  that  she  belonged 
to  the  aristocratic  caste.  She  spoke  frankly  of  the  im- 
provement in  the  condition  of  children,  thanks  to  the 
charity  of  the  Quakers,  the  Americans,  and  the  work  of 

IS6 


THE  NEW  GERMANY 

German  societies.  But  there  was  still  a  great  deal  of 
tuberculosis,  owing  to  overcrowding  in  tenement  houses, 
and  undernourishment  among  children  of  parents 
who  could  not  get  work  because  of  ill  health  or  the 
crippling  wounds  of  war.  There  was  still  a  great  lack  of 
milk  for  babies. 

Then  she  spoke  of  the  professional  classes,  and  put 
herself  among  them. 

"We  are  hard  hit,  and  do  not  get  much  help.  A 
pension  which  was  good  before  the  war  is  now  no  good  at 
all,  owing  to  the  fall  of  the  mark.  Even  our  children 
do  not  get  the  care  of  the  working  classes,  perhaps 
because  of  our  pride.     I  have  a  little  boy — " 

She  hesitated  at  making  personal  revelations,  but 
then  explained  that  her  husband,  a  German  officer,  had 
been  killed  in  the  war,  and  that  her  boy  never  had 
enough  to  eat  until,  swallowing  pride,  she  had  sent 
him  to  the  soup  kitchens.  She  was  paid  seven  hundred 
and  fifty  marks  a  month  for  her  present  work,  which 
she  was  lucky  to  get.  But  without  family  help  it  was 
not  enough  for  life. 

"Clothes  eat  up  our  wages,"  she  said.  "In  work 
like  this,  receiving  visitors,  one  must  dress  decently. 
It  is  very  difficult.  One  has  to  go  to  bed  while  one's 
underclothing  is  in  the  wash!" 

She  shook  hands  and  laughed. 

"Perhaps  things  will  get  better  presently." 

That  was  a  little  glimpse  behind  the  scenes  of  the 
outward  welfare  I  saw  in  Berlin,  and  doubtless  there 
are  hundreds  of  women  like  that  who  have  to  fight  a 
desperate  struggle  for  decent  livelihood,  as  in  most 
countries  of  Europe. 

That  did  not  alter  my  conviction  that  Germany,  as  a 
whole,  was  recovering  from  the  exhaustion  of  war  and 
regaining  a  fair  measure  of  prosperity,  by  a  combined 
intense  industrial  effort.     Her  factories  were  producing 

157 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

again  at  full  pace,  and  at  a  price  which  could  undersell 
all  competitors. 

Better  than  statistics,  clearer  to  the  vision,  in  showing 
the  variety  and  activity  of  German  manufacturers,  was 
a  visit  to  a  great  stores,  hke  that  of  Wertheim,  corre- 
sponding to  Harrod's,  Barker's,  and  Selfridge's  in  Eng- 
land, or  Marshal  Field's  in  Chicago.  On  floor  after 
floor  was  a  display  of  manufactured  articles,  porcelain, 
pottery,  leather  goods,  metal  ware,  every  object  of  house- 
hold use  and  ornament,  excellent  in  design,  and,  reckoned 
in  foreign  exchanges,  marvelously  cheap.  Reckoning 
the  mark  at  one  penny,  here  was  a  competition  which 
would  beat  the  markets  of  the  world.  I  was  particu- 
larly struck  by  the  book  department,  remembering  the 
shoddy  appearance  of  English  pubHcations  and  their 
abominable  cost — a  bad  novel  on  bad  paper  for  seven- 
and-sixpence,  a  "cheap"  reprint  for  two  shiUings,  a 
volume  of  history  or  philosophy  for  fifteen  shillings, 
horribly  produced  in  flimsy  bindings.  These  German 
books  were  printed  on  splendid  paper,  well  illustrated, 
well  bound,  most  tastefully  produced.  A  new  novel 
was  fifteen  marks,  or  one-and-threepence;  the  classics 
of  the  world  were  to  be  had  for  eight  and  a  half 
marks. 

But  the  metal  goods  were  even  more  astonishing  in 
their  cheapness,  and  as  I  reckoned  about  a  quarter  of 
the  price  to  be  found  in  English  shops. 

"Tariff  or  no  tariff,"  said  a  friend  of  mine,  "how  are 
we  going  to  compete  with  German  goods  when,  for 
instance,  a  safety  razor,  equal  in  quality  to  Gillette's, 
can  be  sold  wholesale  for  ninepence?" 

He  laughed,  but  I  detected  a  note  of  anxiety  in  his 
voice  when  he  said: 

"Germany  is  working  as  no  other  people  in  the  world, 
and  her  workingmen  are  getting  sevenpence  halfpenny 
an  hour,  compared  with  one-and-ninepence,  or  half  a 

158 


THE  NEW  GERMANY 

crown  in  England,  producing  better  stuff,  and  without 
limitation  of  output.  What's  going  to  be  England's 
chance?  Hugo  Stinnes  and  the  big  trusts  are  organiz- 
ing the  greatest  industrial  machine  the  world  has  ever 


seen." 


VII 

Every  student  of  German  life  is  now  talking  of  Stinnes 
as  the  great  industrial  autocrat  of  Germany,  and  outside 
Germany  he  is  regarded  as  a  dark,  sinister  figure,  a 
kind  of  evil  genius,  like  a  German  Lenin,  though  his 
philosophy  is  the  antithesis  of  Bolshevism.  He  is, 
undoubtedly,  the  most  powerful  personality  in  Germany 
to-day,  the  owner  of  sixty  newspapers  serving  the 
interests  of  the  Deutsches  Volksparteiy  and  preaching 
his  own  gospel,  which  is  the  industrial  supremacy  of 
Germany  by  intensive  production  based  upon  cheap 
labor  and  revolutionary  methods  of  manufacture, 
obtaining  the  highest  degree  of  efficiency,  power,  combi- 
nation, and  distribution.  Creating  a  gigantic  trust 
for  the  polling  of  immense  resources  of  raw  material, 
capital,  and  labor,  his  method  is  to  build  vertically  from 
coal,  iron,  and  steel  to  all  branches  of  manufacture  in 
which  these  raw  materials  are  used,  and  to  capture  the 
world's  markets  by  a  quality  and  cheapness  which  will 
put  German  goods  beyond  competition.  As  a  young 
man,  he  inherited  enormous  estates,  mines,  ironworks, 
and  royalties  valued  at  seven  million  pounds  sterling. 
There  was  no  branch  of  his  own  industries  in  which  he 
did  not  have  technical  and  personal  knowledge.  Not 
the  humblest  laborer  in  his  employ  could  stand  up  and 
tell  him  about  conditions  of  life  which  he  had  not  learned 
by  sweat  of  body  and  toil  of  mind.  He  had  worked  as 
a  pit  boy,  coal  hewer,  mine  foreman.  He  had  been 
stoker,  engineer,  ship's  officer,  and  sea  captain.  He 
was  a  slave  driver  to  his  own  workmen,  and  imported 

159 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

Polish  labor  to  keep  wages  low.  His  philosophy  of  life 
would  have  been  heartily  indorsed  by  a  Manchester 
mill  owner  of  the  early  nineteenth  century,  using  women 
and  children  as  slaves  of  the  machines.  The  Stinnes 
Trust  consisted  last  year  of  six  great  companies  employ- 
ing two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  men  and  having  a 
capital  of  twelve  million  marks,  but  always  their  tenta- 
cles are  stretching  out  to  more  industries — of  electricity, 
coal,  iron,  shipping,  and  factory  work,  absorbing  their 
capital  and  power  and  extending  their  activities  over 
fresh  fields.  Every  form  of  by-product  is  used  and 
marketed.  Other  countries  are  being  invaded  by  the 
Stinnes  power.  The  blast  furnaces  of  Austria  are  work- 
ing again  with  the  raw  material  sent  to  them  by  his 
headquarters.  He  is  negotiating  in  Hungary  for  enor- 
mous ironworks.  The  iron  ore  of  Upper  Silesia  finds 
its  way  to  his  factories.  His  agents  are  active  in 
Russia,  and  he  is  ready  to  rebuild  their  worn  -  out 
railways,  to  manufacture  engines  at  the  rate  of  eight 
thousand  a  year,  and  trucks  at  the  rate  of  sixty  thou- 
sand, when  the  time  comes  for  Russia  to  do  business 
again. 

Stinnes  is  only  one,  though  the  most  powerful,  of  the 
German  industrial  kings  who  are  succeeding  to  the  old 
monarchies  of  the  Empire.  August  Thyssen  is  another 
employing  a  hundred  and  twenty-five  thousand  men, 
of  whom  sixty-five  thousand  are  at  Muelheim,  which 
is  one  great  city  of  furnaces  and  factories.  Peter 
Kloeckner  is  another  of  the  steel  and  iron  magnates 
with  a  capital  as  great  as  that  of  old  man  Thyssen,  and 
second  in  the  list  of  coal  producers.  More  romantic 
to  the  imagination  is  the  transformation  of  Krupp's. 
After  the  years  of  war  and  prewar  activity  during  which 
they  produced  nothing  but  great  guns  and  armaments 
of  all  kinds,  they  accepted  instantly  the  conditions  of 
military  defeat  and  with  marvelous  rapidity  and  skill 

i6o 


THE  NEW  GERMANY 

adapted  their  machinery  to  the  demands  of  peace. 
Railway  engines,  agricultural  implements,  cash  regis- 
ters, every  kind  of  metal  work,  are  produced  in  vast 
quantities  in  the  sheds  where  great  guns  and  machine 
guns  were  once  produced,  and  in  every  part  of  the  world 
the  agents  of  Krupp  are  exploring  new  markets,  arrang- 
ing contracts,  feeling  the  pulse  of  trade. 

These  trusts  are  acquiring  a  tremendous  social  power 
in  the  German  state  which  one  day  may  quickly  take 
over  the  state.  Already  they  are  proposing  to  tax 
themselves  for  the  benefit  of  the  German  Reich,  accord- 
ing to  their  own  calculations  of  industrial  revenue 
and  the  taxable  value  of  their  output.  A  certain  amount 
of  latitude  is  given  to  the  views  of  the  workers,  who  are 
represented  by  councils,  and  their  wages  are  regulated 
according  to  the  standard  cost  of  life  sufficient  to  keep 
them  in  working  health.  In  the  summer  of  192 1  that 
was  reckoned  at  about  sixty  marks  for  a  full  working 
day,  or  five  shillings  in  English  money.  It  is  to  some 
extent  an  actual  demonstration  of  the  French  syndicat 
idea,  and  it  is  within  the  bounds  of  possibility  that  it  is 
a  new  form  of  government  by  industrial  trusts  grad- 
ually absorbing  the  power  and  control  of  the  state. 
At  present,  however,  political  ideas  are  being  kept 
subordinate  to  the  need  of  the  economic  reconstruction 
of  Germany,  and  it  is  to  the  industrial  genius  and  energy- 
of  these  organizers  that  Germany  owes  it  that  she  is 
recovering  steadily  from  the  enormous  exhaustion  of 
war. 

By  the  summer  of  192 1  Germany's  coal  production 
amounted  to  about  two-thirds  of  the  prewar  quantity; 
and  half  the  amount  of  prewar  tonnage  (though  largely 
under  foreign  flags)  was  coming  to  the  port  of  Hamburg, 
which  had  been  silent  and  deserted  for  so  many  years. 
The  deposits  in  the  big  banks  had  gone  up  by  fifty  per 
cent  in  little   more  than   a  year.     The  effect   of  the 

i6^ 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

recovery  of  trade  was  visible  in  the  life  of  the  people. 
When  I  arrived  in  Berlin  at  the  beginning  of  June  all 
food  cards  had  been  done  away  with,  except  the  bread 
card,  which  was  due  to  go  within  a  few  weeks.  Mean- 
while it  was  possible  to  buy  white  rolls,  and  in  some 
cases  white  bread,  without  cards  in  the  shops.  The 
harvest  reports  were  very  good,  and  it  was  estimated 
that  for  the  first  time  since  the  end  of  1916  the  supply 
of  cereals  for  bread  would  be  suflftcient.  Germany's 
trade  was  increasing  in  many  countries.  A  special 
push  was  being  made  in  the  "neutral"  nations  and  in 
South  America.  While  in  February,  1921,  as  compared 
with  February,  1920,  South  America's  trade  with  the 
whole  of  Europe  went  down  by  nearly  fifty  per  cent, 
that  with  Germany  alone  increased  by  twenty  per  cent. 
In  19 1 9  Germany  sent  to  the  United  States  about  ten 
miUion  dollars'  worth  of  goods;  in  1920  she  sent 
eighty-eight  million  dollars'  worth.  She  had  Great 
Britain  thoroughly  beaten  in  the  automobile  trade 
in  European  countries,  sending  to  Switzerland,  for 
example,  motor  cars,  motor  cycles,  and  accessories  to 
sixty  times  the  value  of  British  exports  to  that  country. 
In  Holland  especially  she  had  a  stronger  commercial 
hold  than  in  the  year  before  the  war. 

All  these  facts  reveal  the  progress  of  German  trade, 
astonishing  for  a  country  so  utterly  defeated,  so  drained 
of  blood  and  treasure,  so  powerless,  for  a  time,  under 
the  military  and  economic  menace  of  Great  Britain  and 
France.  Yet  this  progress  did  not  amount,  even  then, 
to  the  prosperity  of  prewar  conditions,  though,  to  judge 
from  the  fantasies  of  French  and  British  newspapers, 
one  might  imagine  that  Germany,  by  some  economic 
miracle,  had  gained  new  and  enormous  wealth.  The 
miracle  really  was  that  in  two  and  a  half  years  of  peace 
she  was  about  two-thirds  ''normal"  compared  with 
her  prewar  trade  and  leaving  out  of  account  her  vast 

162 


THE  NEW  GERMANY 

war  debts  and  the  indemnities  which  she  had  pledged 
herself  to  pay. 

VIII 

In  Berlin  I  attended  the  meeting  of  the  Reichstag  when 
Doctor  Wirth,  the  Chancellor,  outlined,  broadly  and 
vaguely,  the  manner  in  which  he  proposed  that  Germany 
should  pay  that  Bill  of  Costs.  All  his  oratory  could  be 
reduced  to  four  words — intense  industry,  economy, 
efficiency.  It  was,  nevertheless,  a  historic  scene, 
memorable  and  exciting  to  me,  as  to  all  those  German 
Deputies  who  listened  to  words  which  emphasized 
heavily  and  without  optimism  the  enormous  burden 
which  Germany  must  support  for  half  a  century.  From 
the  extreme  Left,  where  sat  the  little  communist  group, 
came  derisive  cries,  and  from  the  extreme  Right  of 
Junker  tradition  occasional  outbursts  of  anger  and 
scorn.  But  mostly  those  men  sat  silent,  moody, 
introspective. 

To  me  the  scene  in  the  assembly  and  in  the  lobbies 
outside  was  astonishing  as  a  psychological  adventure. 
Here  were  many  of  the  men  who  in  this  same  building 
had  heard  the  declaration  of  war  and  echoed  the  procla- 
mation of  many  victories,  had  listened  exultantly  to 
the  terms  of  peace  which  would  be  imposed  upon  Eng- 
land and  France,  had  year  after  year  voted  the  sup- 
plies to  carry  on  the  war,  and,  at  last,  had  faced,  here 
again,  the  news  of  utter,  irretrievable  defeat  and  ruin. 
Count  BernstorfF  passed  me  in  the  lobby,  and  I  had 
some  words  with  him,  watching  his  debonair  manner, 
detecting  a  faint  trace  of  American  accent.  If  he  had 
been  a  greater  diplomat  and  an  honester  man,  perhaps 
Germany  would  not  have  lost  the  war.  .  .  .  Scheide- 
mann  went  by,  the  Socialist  who  put  his  party  at  the 
service  of  the  militarists  with  the  same  patriotic  fervor 
as  the   Labor    Party  did   in   England.  .  .  .  Not  many 

163 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

other  men  did  I  know,  even  by  name,  but  I  knew  them 
as  those  who  represented  the  German  people  at  a  time 
when  any  EngHshman  coming  to  this  Reichstag  would 
have  been  killed  Hke  a  rat,  and  when  No-Man's  Land, 
with  its  death  pits,  divided  them  and  us.  Queer  to  be 
standing  in  the  midst  of  them,  listening  to  that  talk! 
A  little  shiver  passed  down  my  spine  as  the  thought 
came  to  me.  A  German  coming  to  our  House  of  Com- 
mons for  the  first  time  after  war  would  perhaps  be 
affected  in  the  same  way. 

The  change  in  the  attitude  of  men  one  to  another 
was  suggested  at  a  dinner  table  in  Berlin  one  night, 
when  I  sat  next  to  a  German  banker  who  had  fought  all 
through  the  war,  and  opposite  a  British  major  who  was 
four  years  on  the  western  front.  It  was  the  banker's 
brother  who  made  the  remark,  in  an  aside  to  me. 

"How  ridiculous  is  war!"  he  said.  "Three  years  ago 
your  major  and  my  brother  would  have  tried  to  kill 
each  other  at  sight.  Now  they  are  sitting  at  the  same 
table,  discussing  political  economy,  and  there  is  no 
temptation  in  the  knives  beside  their  plates!" 

This  gentleman  made  another  remark  which  interested 
me.  We  were  walking  down  the  Friedrichstrasse, 
speaking  English  in  loud  voices,  because  of  the  crowd 
about  us.  No  one  turned  to  glance  at  us,  there  was  no 
hostile  look  because  of  the  English  speech,  and  the 
German  by  my  side  pointed  the  moral. 

"You  see,  we  can  speak  English  without  arousing 
dislike.  It  is  only  the  Germans  in  foreign  countries 
who  have  to  lower  their  voices  when  they  speak  their 
hated  tongue." 

There  is  indeed  in  Germany  now  no  touch  of  hostility 
to  English  folk.  On  the  contrary,  their  nationality 
is  a  passport  to  German  favor  in  the  hotels,  in  the 
street  cars,  anywhere.  We  are  popular,  strange  as  it 
may  seem,  and  the  Germans   believe  in  our  sense  of 

164 


THE  NEW  GERMANY 

magnanimity  and  in  our  tradition  for  fair  play.  "Gott 
strafe  England!"  is  a  forgotten  song,  never,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  well  known  in  Germany,  though  we  made  the 
most  of  it  in  war  time.  The  strangest,  most  paradox- 
ical, most  grotesque  revulsion  of  popular  sentiment — 
yet,  on  the  whole,  hopeful  to  humanity — ^which  struck 
my  imagination  in  BerHn  during  that  visit  was  when  I 
stood  amid  a  crowd  of  Germans  reading  a  bulletin 
from  Upper  Silesia  on  the  board  of  a  newspaper  office. 
It  described  the  arrival  of  British  troops  into  the  dis- 
puted zone  between  the  Poles  and  Germans.  The 
Black  Watch  had  come,  and  officers  and  men  were 
being  carried  shoulder  high  and  garlanded  with  flowers 
by  the  German  population.  The  Black  Watch!  Three 
years  before  they  were  called  "The  Ladies  from  Hell" 
by  the  German  soldiers,  who  dreaded  their  bayonet 
work,  their  ruthlessness  in  killing.  Now  they  were 
the  champions  of  German  claims,  the  darlings  of  the 
German  crowds. 

"The  EngHsh  are  our  friends,"  said  a  German  in 
the  crowd.     "The  French  will  always  be  our  enemies." 

I  moved  away  from  the  crowd  with  a  sense  of  the  irony 
of  life  and  the  idiocy  of  men.  For  four  and  a  half 
years  of  frightful  history  we  had  called  the  Germans 
"Huns,"  had  exhausted  all  our  wealth  and  hurled 
the  flower  of  our  youth  into  the  furnace  fires  in  order 
to  kill  them  in  great  numbers,  as  they  killed  us.  The 
French  had  been  our  comrades,  and  we  had  (as  we 
thought)  sealed  our  friendship  eternally  by  the  mystical 
union  of  common  sacrifice.  Now  British  soldiers  were 
being  carried  shoulder  high  by  German  people,  and  the 
French  were  scowling  at  us,  even  in  Paris,  if  we  spoke 
English  so  that  the  passers-by  could  hear.  The  bottom 
was  knocked  out  of  the  meaning  of  the  war,  if  ever  it 
had  any  meaning  beyond  the  bloody  rivalry  of  politi- 
cians using  the  bodies  and  souls  of  men  for  their  dirty 

165 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

game,  and  the  insanity  of  mobs,  deluded  by  race  pas- 
sion, inflamed  by  their  leaders.  Is  there  any  sense  at 
all  in  the  turning  of  the  wheel  of  international  policy, 
so  that  our  enemies  of  yesterday  are  our  friends  of  to-day, 
and  our  friends  of  to-day  our  enemies  of  to-morrow? 

Norman  Angell,  in  his  book,  The  Fruits  of  Victory, 
points  out  the  absurdity  of  these  rapid  changes: 

At  the  head  of  the  Polish  armies  is  Marshal  Pilsudski,  who  fought 
under  Austro-German  command  against  Russia.  His  ally  is  the 
Ukrainian  adventurer,  General  Petlura,  who  first  made  a  separate 
peace  at  Brest-Litovsk,  and  entreated  them  to  let  the  German  armies 
into  the  Ukraine,  and  to  deliver  to  them  the  stores  of  grain.  These 
in  May,  1920,  were  the  friends  of  the  AlHes.  The  Polish  Prime 
Minister  at  the  time  we  were  aiding  Poland  was  Baron  Bilinski,  a 
gentleman  who  filled  the  same  post  in  the  Austrian  Cabinet  which 
let  loose  the  world  war,  insisted  hotly  on  the  ultimatum  to  Serbia, 
helped  to  ruin  the  finances  of  the  Hapsburg  dominions  by  war,  and 
then,  after  the  collapse,  repeated  the  same  operations  in  Poland. 
On  the  other  side,  the  command  has  passed,  it  is  said,  to  General 
Brusiloff,  who  again  and  again  saved  the  eastern  front  from  German 
and  Austrian  offensives.  He  is  now  the  "enemy,"  and  his  oppo- 
nents our  "allies."  They  are  fighting  to  tear  the  "Ukraine,  which 
means  all  South  Russia,  away  from  the  Russian  state.  The  pre- 
ceding year  we  sent  millions  to  achieve  the  opposite  result.  The 
French  sent  their  troops  to  Odessa,  and  we  gave  our  tanks  to  Deni- 
kin,  in  order  to  enable  him  to  recover  this  region  for  imperial  Russia." 

How  long  is  this  madness  going  to  prevail  in  Europe.? 
Is  there  no  hope  at  all  in  the  common  sense  of  peoples, 
seeing  at  last  the  monstrous  absurdity  of  these  group- 
ings and  regroupings  of  armed  powers  controlled  and 
directed  now  this  way,  now  that,  by  the  sinister  ambi- 
tions of  statesmen  who  shift  their  principles  and  trans- 
fer their  allegiance  as  easily  as  they  change  their  shirts? 


IX 

When  I  was  last  in  Germany  two  thoughts  dominated 
the  mind  of  every  man  and  woman  with  whom  I  spoke, 

166 


THE  NEW  GERMANY 

and  both  thoughts  were  inseparably  Hnked.  Could 
Germany  pay  the  vast  indemnities  to  which  she  was 
pledged,  and  would  France  and  Great  Britain  so  divide 
Upper  Silesia  that  the  Poles  would  remain  in  possession 
of  the  greatest  stronghold  of  German  industry?  That 
the  payment  of  indemnities  depended  upon  the  settle- 
ment of  Upper  Silesia  in  favor  of  German  claims  and 
German  votes  was  the  absolute  and  sincere  belief  not 
only  of  the  Germans  themselves,  but  of  all  British 
experts  with  whom  I  spoke.  More  even  than  the 
economic  position  of  Germany  was  involved,  though 
that  would  decide  the  fate  of  Europe.  The  German 
people  believed  it  to  be  a  test  case  of  justice  and  "fair 
play"  among  the  democracies  of  Europe.  If  the  Polish 
insurgents  were  allowed  to  hold  what  they  had  seized 
against  the  authority  of  the  Inter-Allied  Commission 
and  contrary  to  the  German  votes  of  six  to  four  in  the 
plebiscite  which  had  been  taken  under  Allied  control, 
then  Germany  would  know  that  in  spite  of  her  pledge  to 
pay  the  penalties  of  defeat — and  her  payments — she 
was  to  be  given  no  chance  of  recovery,  nor  any  justice, 
and  that  the  policy  of  France  was  to  prevent  her  recov- 
ery upon  any  terms  whatever. 

That  was  the  talk  of  a  group  of  young  Germans, 
obviously  ex-officers,  with  whom  I  sat  at  table,  waiting 
for  an  interview  with  Herr  Stresemann,  the  leader  of 
the  Deutsches  Volkspartei  and  the  political  representa- 
tive of  Hugo  Stimies,  the  industrial  magnate.  The 
scene  was  curious,  for  it  was  in  the  club  of  the  Volks- 
partei after  Doctor  Wirth  's  speech  in  the  Reichstag  out- 
lining the  program  for  the  payment  of  indemnities. 
With  young  Raymond  Swing,  the  American  correspond- 
ent, I  was  shown  into  an  antechamber  divided  by  a 
curtain  from  a  room  in  which  Stresemann  was  speaking 
to  the  members  of  his  party.  The  waiter  placed  chairs 
for  us  and  offered  us  refreshment.     There  was  nothing 

167 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

to  hinder  us  from  standing  by  the  curtain  and  Hstening 
to  the  words  which  Stresemann  was  speaking  with 
harsh  and  rapid  eloquence.  I  could  not  help  wondering 
what  would  have  happened  if  two  Germans  had  entered 
the  Constitutional  Club  while  Lord  Curzon,  perhaps, 
was  addressing  a  private  gathering  of  Tories  and  out- 
lining the  future  policy  of  his  party.  They  would  not 
have  been  received  with  such  friendly  confidence,  .  .  . 
Presently  the  speech  ended  and  there  was  a  surging  move- 
ment of  men,  among  whom  were  a  few  ladies,  to  the 
room  in  which  I  sat  with  my  friend.  Groups  took 
possession  of  small  tables,  ordered  beer  and  sand- 
wiches, and  discussed  their  leader's  speech.  Although 
it  was  the  eve  of  a  day  when  Germany  was  face  to  face 
with  the  gigantic  burdens  of  her  war  penalties,  there 
was  no  sign  of  dejection  in  this  crowd  of  politicians. 
They  were  cheerful,  vivacious,  argumentative,  and 
keen.  Herr  Stresemann,  buttonholed  on  all  sides, 
broke  away  to  ask  for  my  patience  a  little  while  longer 
and  introduced  me  to  the  group  of  young  men  who 
made  a  place  for  me  at  their  table.  Instantly  the  con- 
versation turned  to  Upper  Silesia,  and  I  was  asked  why 
the  Allies  had  allowed  the  Poles  to  "jump  the  claim" 
at  the  very  time  when  Germany  was  asked  to  pay  in- 
demnities which  would  strain  all  her  industrial  resources. 
Before  I  could  answer,  Stresemann  came  to  me  and  said, 
"At  last!"  and  led  me  away  to  a  little  table  reserved  for 
himself. 

"What  were  you  talking  about .^"  he  asked,  glancing 
at  the  group  of  men  I  had  left;  and  when  I  said,  "Upper 
Silesia"  and  laughed,  he  started  at  once  upon  that 
subject,  which  was  a  kind  of  obsession  in  the  German 
mind. 

"Yes,"  he  said,  as  though  continuing  a  discussion. 
"If  we  lose  Upper  Silesia,  or  any  considerable  part  of 
it,  we  shall  be  unable  to  pay  the  indemnities.     Our 

1 68 


THE  NEW  GERMANY 

whole  economic  position  depends  on  that.  There  lie 
our  main  sources  of  raw  material  for  manufactures. 
There  exist  our  greatest  strongholds  of  industry.  Ger- 
man capital,  labor,  and  organization  have  built  up 
the  prosperity  of  Silesia.  Take  that  from  us  and  we 
are  crippled." 

I  had  a  long  conversation  with  this  energetic  little 
man,  who,  everybody  told  me,  was  the  ablest  politician 
in  Germany,  sure  of  bsing  Chancellor  after  the  down- 
fall of  Doctor  Wirth's  v/eak  Coalition.  Reactionary  in 
the  sense  of  supporting  the  old  traditions  of  German 
national  pride  and  monarchist  sentiment — "the  Kaiser 
did  not  will  the  war, "  he  said,  very  solemnly — he  told 
me  frankly  that  he  has  no  use  for  democracy  unless 
well  disciplined  and  kept  working.  But  he  is  progres- 
sive according  to  the  ideals  of  Stinnes,  his  master, 
upon  economic  lines  of  advance. 

He  spoke  to  me  at  length  about  French  policy  and 
his  voice  took  a  deeper  note  of  passion. 

**The  instincts  of  the  German  people,"  he  said,  "are 
for  peace.  Our  future  is  in  peace  and  not  in  war.  We 
would  willingly  have  made  friends  with  France  and 
worked  to  repair  her  ruin,  if  her  people  had  been  only  a 
little  generous,  only  a  little  courteous,  after  our  defeat. 
But  they  have  done  their  best,  and  are  doing  it,  to 
arouse  feelings  of  enmity  and  rage.  In  our  occupied 
districts  they  have  been  needlessly  arrogant." 

He  told  me  a  story  of  how  the  French  general  fined 
the  Mayor  of  Duisburg  (which  French  troops  entered 
to  enforce  the  signing  of  the  indemnities)  the  sum  of 
five  thousand  marks  for  delay  in  answering  his  summons 
to  appear  before  him,  and  when  the  mayor  asked,  very 
civilly,  "What  further  wishes  have  you?"  fined  him 
another  five  thousand  for  using  the  word  "wishes" 
instead  of  "commands."  ...  I  did  not  tell  Herr 
Stresemann  many  similar  and  more  painful  stories  of 

12  169 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

the  German  treatment  of  French  mayors  in  time  of 
war.     I  was  Hstening  and  not  talking. 

"Those  are  but  pin  pricks,"  he  said,  "but  in  their 
policy  and  in  their  Press  they  reveal  a  hatred,  a  desire 
to  humiliate,  a  ruthless  injustice,  outrageous  to  our 
honor  and  dignity,  which  make  it  impossible  for  German 
people  to  be  on  friendly  terms  with  them.  They  are 
deliberately  stirring  up  a  desire  for  revenge  instead  of 
trying  to  allay  the  hatreds  of  war." 

He  told  me  the  French  policy  was  seeking  to  repair 
three  mistakes  to  which  Napoleon  confessed.  Napoleon 
said,  "My  mistakes  were  to  let  Prussia  get  strong,  to 
let  Poland  be  weak,  and  to  misunderstand  Russia. " 

"French  diplomacy  now,"  said  Stresemann,  "is  to 
weaken  Prussia,  strengthen  Poland,  and  dominate 
Russia,  by  setting  up  a  czar  as  a  puppet  of  France." 

But  their  policy  would  fail,  he  thought,  because  there 
is  no  tendency  in  Germany  to  break  away  from  Prussia, 
in  spite  of  all  French  hopes  and  intrigues,  while  Poland 
will  always  be  weak  and  ready  to  fall  apart  because 
of  the  inherent  instability  of  Polish  character.  As 
for  Russia,  French  puppets  like  Denikin  and  Wrangel 
had  failed  miserably,  and  modern  France,  more  than 
Napoleon  himself,  could  not  understand  the  spirit  of 
Russia. 

Stresemann  went  at  length  Into  the  question  of  repa- 
rations, and  held  the  view  that  after  a  few  years  during 
which  Germany  will  desperately  endeavor  to  fulfill 
her  pledges,  European  peoples  will  realize  the  folly  of 
maintaining  such  abnormal  conditions  in  world  trade, 
and  will  call  another  conference  to  revise  the  whole 
treaty  of  peace  and  develop  a  scheme  of  international 
economic  union  by  which  the  interests  of  all  European 
nations  would  be  secured,  with  some  better  arrange- 
ment than  wild,  destructive  competition  with  tariflF 
walls  and  national  rivalries.     He  suggested  a  scheme 

170 


THE  NEW  GERMANY 

which,  as  I  previously  knew,  is  one  of  the  pet  ideas  of 
Hugo  Stinnes. 

"The  war  debts  of  all  nations  could  be  wiped  out  in 
a  few  years,"  said  Stresemann,  "by  a  small  tax  on  raw 
material,  hke  coal  or  cotton,  paid  by  all  purchasers  and 
put  into  a  common  pool  for  that  purpose." 

In  his  opinion  Germany,  with  the  best  will  in  the  world, 
will  be  unable  to  continue  her  payment  of  indemnities 
for  half  a  century,  and  this  will  be  recognized,  he  thinks, 
by  the  increasing  common  sense  of  European  peoples. 

That,  undoubtedly,  was  the  official  view  of  the 
Deutsches  Falksparteiy  but  while  I  was  in  Berlin  it  was 
challenged  by  Rathenau,  one  of  the  greatest  and  most 
liberal-minded  of  social  reformers  in  Germany,  who 
said  definitely  in  the  Reichstag,  as  Minister  of  Recon- 
struction, "We  can  pay."  Stresemann 's  pessimism  was 
also  repudiated  by  Scheidemann,  leader  of  the  Majority 
Socialists,  with  whom  I  had  a  talk  in  company  with 
his  friend  and  adviser,  Doctor  Helphand,  a  millionaire 
Socialist.  In  reply  to  my  request  for  an  interview, 
they  sent  an  automobile  for  me  in  Berlin,  and  I  journeyed 
out  through  the  glorious  woods  of  the  Griinewald  to  the 
edge  of  Wansee,  which  is  one  of  the  beautiful  lakes 
outside  the  city  to  which  BerHners  go  for  bathing  and 
boating.  A  most  pleasant  spot  for  any  SociaHst,  es- 
pecially if  he  lived  in  such  an  elegantly  furnished  villa 
as  that  of  Doctor  Helphand. 

I  was  curious  to  see  Scheidemann,  who  helped  to 
found  the  Republic  after  the  war,  in  which  he  was  but  a 
mild  critic  of  German  militarism,  and  a  stanch  supporter 
of  imperial  policy  and  war  credits  until  the  great 
wreck  happened.  He  came  into  the  room  a  few  min- 
utes after  my  arrival,  and  in  a  light  linen  suit  he  looked 
to  me  like  a  French  painter,  with  his  tall,  rather  elegant 
figure,  his  silver  hair,  and  little  pointed  beard. 

Scheidemann's  view  of  Germany's  future,  interpreted 

171 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

in  voluble  French  by  Doctor  Helphand  (whose  accent  is 
enormously  Teutonic),  expressed  a  belief  in  the  possi- 
bility of  payment  on  condition  that  the  German  people 
were  given  peace  and  fair  play  by  France  and  England. 
That  was  an  utterly  essential  condition,  but  if  fulfilled, 
Germany  could,  without  doubt,  pay  her  penalties. 

By  demobilization  of  the  army  they  would  save 
eighteen  thousand  milliards  of  gold  marks  annually, 
which  would  go  some  way  to  pay  off  the  yearly  tribute. 
They  could  save  other  sums  by  restricting  imports  of 
luxuries,  by  more  efficient  organization,  and  by  heavier 
internal  taxation.  Then,  by  intensive  production  and 
rapid  trade  development  of  countries  like  Russia,  they 
could  pay  their  Bill  of  Costs  in  full — provided  they  were 
helped  and  not  hindered.  If  Upper  Silesia  were  taken 
Germany  would  be  put  out  of  business,  and  there  would 
be  no  possible  payment  of  indemnities.  But  if  the 
Allies  and  the  United  States  of  America  were  prepared 
to  give  German  industry  a  free  and  full  chance,  it  would 
wipe  out  all  debts.  To  do  that  they  must  have  credit 
and  capital  to  renew  the  wear  and  tear  of  machinery 
and  rolling  stock,  enormously  depreciated  during  the 
war,  and  to  develop  their  industrial  possibilities.  Russia 
was  waiting  for  them.  As  soon  as  the  Russians  returned 
to  ordinary  methods  of  business  Germany  would  be 
ready  also  to  supply  them  with  machinery,  engines, 
agricultural  implements,  every  necessity  of  civilized 
life,  so  repairing  her  devastation.  By  geographical 
position  and  old  trade  relations,  this  task  of  Russian 
reconstruction  would  inevitably  come  to  Germany,  but 
the  German  people  would  only  be  able  to  do  it  in  full 
measure,  to  the  benefit  of  the  whole  world,  if  they  were 
supported  by  the  credit  of  the  United  States,  Great 
Britain,  and  other  countries.  German  labor  and 
organization  would  repay  such  credit  by  good  interest, 
the  fulfillment  of  all  pledges,  and  the  revival  of  world 

172 


THE  NEW  GERMANY 

trade.  That  was  the  hope  of  Germany.  Surely,  said 
Scheidemann,  it  v/as  also  the  hope  of  Europe,  whose 
common  interests  would  be  served. 

I  think  these  men  spoke  sincerely.  I  think  that  all 
the  people  I  met  in  Berlin,  and  afterward  on  the  Rhine, 
faced  very  frankly  the  realities  of  their  situation.  They 
Were  under  no  illusions.  They  knew  and  admitted 
that  military  power  had  passed  from  them,  at  least  for 
a  long  time,  and  that  they  could  resist  nothing  in  the 
way  of  armed  force  set  in  motion  by  France  and  England. 
That,  no  doubt,  is  gall  and  wormwood  to  the  old  mili- 
tary caste,  the  Junkers,  and  the  nationalists  who  look 
back  to  the  old  pomp  and  parade  with  the  same  ferocious 
sentiment,  and  forward  to  a  war  of  revenge  with  hungry 
souls.  But  I  believe,  perhaps  without  sufficient  evi- 
dence, that  the  mass  of  the  German  people,  and  many 
of  their  Republican  leaders,  like  Scheidemann  himself, 
are  relieved  by  the  disappearance  of  militarism,  and  do 
not  want  it  back  again,  but  look  forward  honestly  to 
an  era  of  industrial  peace  and  progress  by  which  they 
will  lift  Germany  out  of  financial  peril  and  gain  great 
victories,  even  industrial  supremacy,  by  the  energy  and 
genius  of  labor  and  science.  Something  has  lifted 
from  the  German  spirit.  Even  in  Berlin  the  people, 
I  am  told  by  those  who  know  them  better  than  I  do, 
are  more  gemuthlig,  good  natured,  and  open  hearted. 
It  is  militarism  which  has  been  lifted  from  them.  The 
old  word  '^verboteUy"  the  old  bullying  of  German 
youth  in  the  barracks  and  on  the  parade  ground,  has 
passed  as  a  dark  spell.  Everyday  life  is  more  agreeable 
without  the  swaggering  bullies  on  the  sidewalks.  Citi- 
zenship is  no  longer  oppressed  by  the  military  caste. 
Defeat  has  not  been  bad  for  them  in  every  way,  and  in 
many  ways  may  be  the  greatest  blessing,  cleansing  to 
the  soul  of  Germany,  bracing  to  her  national  spirit. 
They  see  the  mockery  and  futility  of  war  and  remember 

173 


MORE  THAT  MUST   BE  TOLD 

its  enormous  horror.  In  the  heart  of  the  German  people 
there  is,  I  am  almost  certain,  no  desire  for  another  bout 
of  massacre.  If  I  am  right,  then  Germany  will  gain 
first  the  victory  for  which  the  Allies  professed  to  fight 
— the  death  of  militarism — and  she  will  emerge  from 
all  those  years  of  evil  cleaner  and  brighter  and  kinder, 
with  a  philosophy  of  peace  which  will  help  to  save 
Europe.  I  may  be  too  hopeful,  and  the  old  devil  in 
Germany  may  raise  its  head  again,  the  devil  of  military 
pride,  when  the  nation  has  regained  its  strength  and  the 
sword  of  the  Allies  has  been  put  aside. 

I  would  not  trust  men  like  Stresemann  or  Scheidemann 
too  far.  They  belong  to  the  old  tradition.  I  would 
not  put  any  faith  in  the  reform  of  the  Junker,  for  his 
nature  is  not  to  be  converted.  But  I  would  trust  these 
people  who  bore  the  agony  of  war  and  now  pay  most 
of  its  costs. 

It  is  for  us  to  help  the  German  folk  to  resist  the 
uprising  ever  again  of  that  devil  in  a  spiked  hat  which 
once  controlled  them,  and  we  can  only  do  this  by  cast- 
ing out  our  own  devil  in  brass  hat  or  kepi,  and  the  spirit 
of  the  war  makers  in  old  and  evil  brains. 


THE    PRICE    OF   VICTORY   IN   FRANCE 


AFTER  the  day  of  armistice  in  191 8  the  French  people 
•  were  filled  with  the  intoxication  of  victory.  The  faith 
with  which  they  had  fought  had  been  fulfilled.  It  was 
the  faith  that,  in  spite  of  the  immense  power  of  the 
Germans,  their  military  supremacy  at  the  beginning 
of  the  war  in  man  power  and  machine  power  and  the 
crippling  blows  they  inflicted  on  France  in  the  first 
rush  and  afterward,  they  would  be  beaten  in  the  end, 
beaten  to  the  dust,  by  the  heroism  of  the  French  armies, 
the  genius  of  French  generals,  and  the  unconquerable 
spirit  of  the  French. 

"On  les  aura!"  ("We  shall  have  them!")  was  the  cry 
of  France  even  in  days  when  the  enemy  was  sprawled 
over  their  northern  provinces,  when  they  struck  close 
to  the  heart  of  Paris,  and  when  masses  of  French  troops 
reeled  back  from  their  frightful  onslaughts. 

It  is  true,  as  I  know,  that  at  times  this  faith  in  ulti- 
mate victory  burned  low  in  the  hearts  of  some  French 
men  and  women  whose  souls  were  staggered  by  the 
enormous  and  unceasing  slaughter  of  their  youth,  and 
by  the  narrow,  hair-breadth  line  which  sometimes  stood 
between  the  safety  and  the  death  of  France — as  when 
the  Germans  reached  the  Marne  in  August  of  the  first 
year,  and  again  after  years  of  infernal  struggle  which 
strewed  the  fields  of  France  with  death,  in  July,  191 8. 
But  the  hope  never  flickered  out  into  absolute  despair, 

17s 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

rose  again  into  a  flame  whenever  the  luck  of  war  changed, 
and  became  a  certainty  of  victory  when,  with  American 
help  and  British,  Marshal  Foch  hurled  the  enemy 
across  the  Marne  for  the  second  time  and  forced  them 
into  a  retreat  which  only  ended  with  absolute  surrender. 

So  France  rejoiced  on  the  day  of  armistice,  and  on 
many  other  days  that  followed.  The  national  pride 
of  the  French  was  satisfied.  They  were  not  ungrateful 
for  the  services  of  their  allies  and  friends,  but  they 
believed  that  victory  was  due  most  of  all  to  the  heroic 
spirit  of  France.  They  had  fought  most,  made  greatest 
sacrifice,  and  won  by  the  military  genius  of  Foch.  .  .  . 
As  an  Englishman,  who  saw,  through  the  years  of 
war,  the  valor  of  their  men,  the  miseries  and  the 
courage  of  their  women,  the  marvelous,  unfailing, 
supernatural  heroism  of  the  whole  French  nation,  I 
agree  with  them,  though  I  know  (more  than  they  will 
ever  know  or  admit)  what  British  soldiers  did,  and,  in 
the  end,  the  Americans,  Their  joy  in  victory  was  my 
joy,  too,  though  I  wondered  then,  even  in  the  midst  of 
that  wild  intoxication  of  the  Parisian  crowds  after  the 
surrender  of  the  enemy,  how  soon  it  would  be  before 
they  were  sobered  by  the  remembrance  of  their  million 
dead,  their  two  million  maimed,  blind,  and  shell-shocked 
men,  their  enormous  war  debts,  their  devastated  fields, 
their  failing  birth  rate,  their  price  of  victory. 

It  was  not  very  long  before  that  remembrance,  and 
the  dreadful  actuality  of  truth,  came  to  them.  Even  on 
the  day  of  armistice  there  were  thousands  of  women 
who  wept  in  small  rooms  and  in  back  streets.  "It  is 
victory,"  they  said,  "but  it  will  not  bring  back  our 
men. "  Their  tears  were  hidden  because  of  the  rejoicing 
of  living  youth,  and  their  cry  of  anguish  was  stifled  so 
that  it  should  not  be  heard  above  the  cheers  which  greeted 
the  men  who  had  come  back  with  victory  on  their 
banners. 

176 


THE   PRICE  OF  VICTORY  IN  FRANCE 

For  some  time  after  that  the  gradual  awakening  of 
the  French  people  to  a  sense  of  dismal  reality  was 
soothed  by  the  promises  of  their  statesmen  and  diplo- 
mats. There  were  to  be  great  fruits  of  victory  harvested 
from  the  wealth  of  Germany.  By  the  terms  of  the 
peace  treaty,  the  Germans  would  be  made  to  pay  for 
all  the  damage  they  had  done,  apart  from  the  resur- 
rection of  dead  youth.  They  would  be  forced  to  pay 
indemnities  which  would  reconstruct  the  ravaged  lands 
of  France,  build  up  her  ruins,  wipe  out  the  war  debt, 
pay  for  the  pensions  of  crippled  men  and  widowed 
women.  German  coal  from  the  Saar  or  the  Ruhr 
would  be  delivered  or  seized,  in  return  for  the  German 
destruction  of  the  coal  mines  around  Lens.  The  finan- 
cial ruin  of  France,  as  revealed  by  the  falling  value  of 
the  franc  in  foreign  exchange,  and  by  the  budget  state- 
ments which  admitted  a  lack  of  revenue  to  pay  even  the 
interests  on  unimaginable  debts,  would  be  restored  by 
consignments  of  German  gold.  By  the  peace  treaty 
also,  ruthless  in  the  severity  of  its  terms  to  an  ignoble 
and  brutal  enemy,  France  would  be  secured  from  the 
menace  of  further  wars,  because  Germany  would  be 
so  crushed  and  strangled  and  held  so  tightly  to  the 
forfeit  of  future  payments,  that  she  would  never  be 
allowed  to  recover  her  strength  and  power,  however 
great  the  industry  of  her  workers  or  the  genius  of  her 
financiers. 

II 

These  promises  that  Germany  would  pay  for  every- 
thing were  held  up  to  the  French  people  as  an  induce- 
ment to  keep  quiet,  settle  down  to  work,  and  suffer 
patiently  their  present  poverty.  There  was  to  be  a 
period  of  reconstruction  under  the  direction  of  a  benevo- 
lent government.  For  a  year  the  word  "reconstruc- 
tion" was  used  as  a  kind  of  spell  word  to  lull  the  impa- 

177 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

tience  and  growing  incredulity  of  French  people.  For 
another  year  French  statesmen  kept  up  the  hope  or  the 
pretense  that  the  fruits  of  victory  were  only  delayed 
and  that  in  a  little  while  Germany  would  be  made  to 
disgorge  the  expenses  of  the  war  to  the  last  sou.  They 
still  maintained  their  claim  to  the  261  milHards  of  francs, 
which  represents  more  than  twenty  times  the  annual 
total  of  German  exports  at  their  maximum  figure  before 
the  war,  while  Britain's  claim  amounted  to  8,000 
miUions  of  pounds  sterhng,  or,  according  to  a  financial 
authority,  "far  more  than  all  the  world's  gold  produc- 
tion since  the  dawn  of  history,  plus  the  estimated  con- 
tents of  all  the  gold  mines  at  present  known. " 

Gradually  public  opinion  in  France  became  impatient 
of  promises.  They  wanted  the  delivery  of  the  gold. 
They  wanted  the  fulfillment  of  the  Treaty  of  Versailles, 
utterly  and  quickly.  Germany  had  not  fulfilled  it. 
Her  coal  deliveries  were  shoit  of  the  amounts  required, 
she  had  delayed  disarmament,  she  had  taken  no  steps 
to  punish  her  war  criminals.  Again  and  again  she  had 
delayed  and  dodged  the  payment  of  her  indemnities. 
Even  in  the  spring  of  1921  the  Allied  governments  had 
not  decided  upon  their  final  terms,  and  Germany  was 
still  making  offers  which  the  whole  of  the  French  Press 
and  the  majority  of  French  people  (with  the  exception 
of  the  advanced  Socialists)  denounced  passionately  as 
ridiculous  and  insulting.  They  were  offers  mon- 
strously out  of  keeping  with  the  promise  of  "the  fruits 
of  victory,"  made  by  French  statesmen  to  their  people. 
Passion  was  rising  to  dangerous  heights  in  France. 
Ex-President  Poincare  directed  part  of  it  against  Eng- 
land. It  was  per  fide  Albion  again  thwarting  the  fulfill- 
ment of  French  claims  by  some  secret  pro-Germanism 
among  their  politicians  and  financiers,  or  some  jealousy 
of  France.  Briand,  the  Prime  Minister,  had  to  get 
ready   or   go.     Unless   he   could   give  the   Chamber   a 

178 


THE  PRICE  OF  VICTORY  IN  FRANCE 

definite  guaranty  that  Germany  would  at  last  be  pre- 
sented with  her  bill  and  forced  to  pay,  he  would  be  flung 
out  of  office  by  the  representatives  of  the  people's  pas- 
sion. To  understand  that  passion,  one  must  know  the 
condition  of  life  in  France  and  the  mentality  of  the 
French  people. 

To  say  that  they  were  suffering  from  "soul  sickness" 
is  but  a  mild  way  of  describing  their  disillusionment 
and  disgust  with  the  eff'ects  of  victory.  In  their  polit- 
ical activities  as  well  as  in  their  private  Hfe  they  showed 
an  intense  irritation  with  the  state  of  affairs,  and  a 
sense  of  fear  which  had  followed  the  intoxication  of 
victory,  a  tendency  to  quarrel  with  those  who  were 
their  friends  and  aUies — because  they  thought  that 
they  who  won  the  greatest  share  of  victory  had  gained 
least  of  all  from  peace — and  a  desperate  endeavor  to 
grasp  by  any  force  in  their  power  the  fulfillment  of  their 
most  fantastic  hopes. 

Truly  the  working  classes  and  professional  middle 
class  of  France — the  latter  especially — had  been  mocked 
by  that  phrase,  "the  fruits  of  victory. "  It  had  been  a 
dead-sea  fruit,  bitter  to  the  taste.  The  price  of  food- 
stuffs and  all  necessities  of  life  were  at  least  five  times 
higher  than  at  prewar  rates.  The  clerk,  the  journalist, 
the  salesman  in  a  small  shop,  that  vast  multitude  of 
men  who  in  a  civilized  community  have  to  eke  out  a 
respectable  livelihood  on  fixed  salaries,  that  do  not 
depend  on  manual  labor  or  provide  opportunities  of 
profit  by  commercial  prosperity,  found  themselves 
pinched  to  the  point  of  sharp  distress. 

Certain  articles  of  food  and  living  had  risen  in  price 
like  rockets,  in  Paris  and  other  cities.  Mutton,  for 
instance,  was  fifteen  and  seventeen  francs;  ham,  sixteen 
to  eighteen  francs  a  pound.  A  suit  of  clothes  which 
cost  a  hundred  francs  in  1914  was  not  to  be  had  from 
any  tailor  in  192 1  for  less  than  seven  hundred  francs. 

179 


MORE  THAT '  MUST  BE '  TOLD 

As  I  have  said,  the  middle  classes,  and  especially  the 
clerical  classes,  had  suffered  most.  In  some  cases  their 
salaries  had  been  tripled,  but  this  increase  was  not  in 
proportion  to  that  of  the  laboring  classes.  A  workman, 
for  instance,  earning  six  francs  a  day  before  the  war, 
might  now  get  thirty  francs,  or  even  more.  A  ticket 
collector  on  an  omnibus  got  a  much  higher  wage  than  a 
school-teacher.  But  these  wages  were  all  in  excess  of 
the  possibilities  of  national  economy,  and  were  not 
justified  by  the  production  of  labor,  so  that  unem- 
ployment was  bound  to  ensue,  or  the  downfall  of  indus- 
trial enterprise. 

In  France,  as  in  most  other  countries  of  Europe, 
exasperation  at  high  prices  was  inflamed  by  the  convic- 
tion that  some  part  of  them,  at  least,  was  due  to  the 
profiteering  of  unscrupulous  traders,  utterly  callous 
of  the  common  people,  and  supported  in  a  sinister  way 
by  corrupt  influences  in  the  government,  sympathiz- 
ing with  the  old  claims  of  a  selfish  capitalism  in- 
trenched against  the  growing  menace  of  revolutionary 
labor.  I  heard  strange  stories  of  immense  stores  of 
vegetables  left  to  rot  in  warehouses  while  the  prices 
soared  to  fantastic  heights  in  the  Paris  markets;  of 
great  quantities  of  meat  going  bad  in  the  storage  houses, 
while  small  families  were  starved  of  meat.  The  peasant 
was  profiteering  at  the  expense  of  the  townsman,  the 
manufacturer  was  profiteering  at  the  expense  of  the 
peasant,  and  the  government  was  juggling  with  the 
figures  of  bankruptcy,  by  issuing  paper  money  which 
had  no  reality.  There  was  truth  in  all  these  things, 
and  it  did  not  make  for  economic  recovery  or  health. 


Ill 

The  magic  word  "reconstruction"  did  not  have  much 
power  over  the  bodies  and  souls  of  those  French  peas- 

i8o 


THE  PRICE  OF  VICTORY  IN  FRANCE 

ants  and  villagers  who  returned  to  the  long,  broad  belt 
of  country  which  stretches  across  France  hke  an  open 
wound.  A  year  after  the  war  had  finished  I  went  back 
to  that  country  to  see  new  life  where  for  more  than  four 
years  I  had  seen  a  lot  of  death,  and  the  reravaging  of 
earth  already  ravaged  by  every  kind  of  explosive  gas 
force  and  poisonous  gas.  Nothing  much  had  altered 
except  that  grass  grew  rankly  on  ground  which  was 
bare  and  barren  when  the  guns  had  done  with  it.  Many 
of  the  old  trenches  had  silted  in,  and  the  shell  holes 
which  used  to  be  six  or  eight  feet  deep  were  now  filled  up 
by  the  effect  of  rain,  and  the  cemeteries — those  little 
forests  of  our  dead — were  more  neatly  kept.  In  the 
general  landscape  there  was  not  much  difference, 
though  as  I  looked  closer  I  saw  that  the  peasants  had 
actually  reclaimed  many  of  these  acres,  especially 
around  Peronne  and  south  of  the  Somme,  by  digging 
out  the  chunks  of  steel  that  lay  thick  in  the  soil  and 
searching  for  unexploded  shells  with  a  care  that  did  not 
prevent  many  deaths.  They  had  plowed  the  land, 
and  furrowed  it,  and  sowed  some  kind  of  crop,  and  their 
industry  had  gone  on  since  then  with  untiring  spirit, 
so  that  now  a  broader  stretch  of  country  is  under 
cultivation. 

I  found  little  colonies  of  wooden  huts,  like  the  en- 
campments of  nomad  folk,  constructed  at  places  like 
Passchendaele  and  Langemarck  and  Gheluvelt,  where 
men  of  ours  lived  in  dirty  ditches  from  which  they  rose 
on  days  of  battle  to  cross  through  a  storm  of  fire,  in 
which  many  fell,  a  score  of  yards  or  so,  to  where  the 
enemy  waited  with  machine  guns,  bombs,  and  trench 
mortars.  In  these  wooden  huts  live  the  repatriated 
peasants  who  fled  from  the  red  tide  of  war,  and  I  talked 
with  many  of  them  and  heard  the  truth  that  was  in 
them,  and  the  passion,  and  the  despair. 

The  point  of  view  as  expressed  by  those  people  v/ho 

i8i 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

had  suffered  and  were  suffering  from  the  outrage  of 
war  is  different  from  what  one  would  hear  from  great 
people,  and  closer  to  the  truth  of  life  as  it  is  seen  in 
peasants'  cottages  and  middle-class  homes. 

We  know  what  the  great  people  think,  or,  at  least, 
say.  I  am  sure  M.  Poincare  would  have  nothing  new 
to  tell  me,  if  I  sought  the  honor  of  an  interview  with 
him.  Even  M.  Briand  would  only  utter  large  generali- 
ties on  the  subject  of  future  liberty,  justice,  and  progress, 
and  the  necessity  of  maintaining  the  Entente  Cordiale. 

From  old  people  in  wooden  huts  on  the  edge  of  desert 
lands,  from  drivers  of  hired  motor  cars,  from  visitors 
who  were  soldiers,  from  little  groups  of  people  sitting 
round  wooden  tables  in  wayside  inns,  and  from  business 
men  trying  to  "reconstruct"  that  which  had  been 
destroyed,  I  studied  the  popular  psychology  of  France 
after  the  war,  and  found  it  interesting. 

These  people  were  great  realists.  They  faced  facts 
squarely  and  did  not  camouflage  them  by  fanciful 
hopes  or  rose-colored  romance. 

Not  even  victory,  and  its  pageantry,  covered  up  by 
one  grain  of  dust  their  realization  of  the  immense 
horror  of  war  and  of  its  price  in  blood  and  ruin. 

Military  glory  had  no  meaning  to  them  except  in  stem 
duty  and  the  endurance  of  abominable  things  which 
had  to  be  endured. 

It  was  a  waiter  who  expressed  a  kind  of  rebuke  to  me 
one  night,  when  he  had  been  explaining  the  difference 
between  a  bronze  star  and  a  silver  star  and  a  palm  on  a 
miHtary  decoration.  The  first  is  for  an  act  of  valor 
"cited"  to  his  regiment;  the  second  "cited"  (in  the 
orders  of  the  day)  to  the  division;  the  third  to  the 
whole  army  throughout  France. 

He  had  the  palm,  and  I  said,  '' Magnifique,  ga!'* 

He  turned  away  for  a  moment  with  a  queer,  contemp- 
tuous grimace, 

182 


THE  PRICE  OF  VICTORY  IN  FRANCE 

"Magnificent!  Bah!  ...  It  is  a  reward  for  dirty- 
work.  Up  to  your  knees  in  mud.  Dead  bodies  every- 
where. Stench,  blood,  fear,  abomination.  ...  It  is 
better  to  be  here,  serving  coffee  and  beer,  and  adding 
up  Httle  figures.     It  is  a  better  job." 

This  man,  and  others  Hke  him,  look  back  to  the  years 
of  war  with  disgust,  and  not  as  a  jolly  adventure  with 
good  comradeship  and  good  fun  between  the  ugly  hours, 
hke  some  of  our  men.  They  did  what  they  did  because 
it  was  necessary  to  save  France,  but  they  hated  it  all. 

And  now  they  face  the  present  and  the  future  with, 
mostly,  an  unflinching  sense  of  truth.  Even  those 
who  have  hope  in  the  future,  because  of  their  own 
strength  of  character,  do  not  disguise  from  themselves 
the  slow  rate  of  progress  by  which  it  will  be  possible  to 
clear  away  all  this  ruin  about  them  and  rebuild. 

"Twenty  years,"  "thirty  years,"  were  the  figures 
given  by  people  in  the  devastated  regions  for  the  resur- 
rection of  their  villages  and  farms. 

They  shrugged  their  shoulders  at  the  word  "recon- 
struction," used  as  a  watchword  by  the  newspapers 
and  politicians,  and  said:  "That  is  a  fine  phrase!  .  .  . 
Meanwhile  we  have  no  material,  no  indemnities  for  our 
loss,  no  means  of  getting  labor.  The  government 
does  nothing.  Perhaps  it  is  powerless  to  do  anything 
because  of  our  drain  of  blood,  this  great  devastation, 
and  the  poverty  of  all  but  the  profiteers." 

I  had  a  strange  little  meal  in  a  wooden  shanty  on  the 
Somme  battlefields,  with  a  soldier,  a  farmer,  and  a 
commercial  traveler. 

In  the  next  room  was  a  wedding  feast,  and  we  were 
given  what  was  left  over,  between  each  course,  served 
by  the  wife  of  an  English  sergeant  who  had  settled 
down  in  France  after  the  war.  We  had  to  wait  long, 
and  filled  up  the  gaps  by  conversation. 

It  was    the    commercial    traveler  who  talked   most, 

183 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

and  as  he  came  from  Paris,  talked  well,  with  a  cynical 
sense  of  humor,  beneath  which  lay  a  real  sadness,  as 
of  a  man  who  sees  a  glory  that  has  passed. 

After  the  usual  ribaldries  about  the  bride  and  bride- 
groom in  the  next  room,  he  spoke  of  the  conditions  of 
France,  and  the  coming  elections,  and  the  psychology 
of  French  men  and  women  after  the  war. 

"The  war,"  he  said,  "has  finished  France  as  a  great 
Power.     We  are  going  downstairs." 

"We  won  the  war,"  said  the  young  farmer.  "We 
climbed  up  to  victory,  in  spite  of  the  power  of  Germany." 

"We  had  people  on  each  side,  pushing  us  up,"  said 
the  commercial  traveler.  He  enumerated  the  crowds 
that  had  propped  up  France — "English,  Scots,  Irish, 
Australians,  Canadians,  Americans,  black  men,  yellow 
men,  and  chocolate  men. 

"As  a  nation  we  are  going  downstairs.  We  have 
had  our  last  fling — and  we  have  flung  the  best  of  our  life 
into  the  pool.     Our  population,  what  is  it? 

"Fortunately  there  are  still  marriages — I  drink  to 
the  health  of  the  bride  next  door!  but  we  are  dwindling 
down,  and  always  Germany  is  producing  fat  boys. 
Financially,  too,  we  are  down.  We  are  beggars  of  the 
United  States." 

"And  England,"  said  the  soldier,  who  listened  more 
than  he  talked,  "will  gobble  us  up  little  by  httle." 

"That's  true,"  said  the  commercial  traveler. 

"How's  that?"  I  asked. 

The  soldier  hestitated.  Then  he  said:  "We  are  speak- 
ing frankly.  England  is  a  great  country,  logical, 
businesslike.  Our  weakness  will  be  her  advantage. 
She  will  capture  our  markets.  She  will  enlarge  her 
empire  at  our  expense.  Even  now  she  begrudges  us 
Syria." 

His  mind  had  been  affected  by  the  campaign  of 
propaganda   which   was   being   developed   not   only   in 

184 


THE  PRICE  OF  VICTORY  IN  FRANCE 

the  Paris  papers,  but  in  every  local  sheet  in  France,  on 
the  question  of  Syria  and  the  "devotion  of  France  to 
the  self-determination  of  the  Egyptian  people."  We 
were  accused  of  hypocrisy  for  our  policy  in  Egypt,  and 
it  was  not  good  reading. 

The  commercial  traveler  began  to  talk  about  the 
elections. 

"They  are  all  faked,"  he  said.  "The  French  people 
do  not  govern  themselves.  They  are  governed  by  a 
swarm  of  professional  politicians,  who  control  the 
whole  machine  of  bureaucracy,  which  is  spread  like  a 
network  over  the  whole  of  France — by  swarms  of  little 
paid  officials,  who  do  nothing  but  draw  their  salaries. 

"It  has  been  like  that  before  the  war,  and  will  be  so 
after  the  war. 

"A  new  party  will  come  into  power  with  fine  words  in 
its  mouth.  Do  you  think  they  will  bring  water  to  these 
devastated  regions  or  build  up  destroyed  villages? 
Oh,  monsieur,  you  are  an  optimist!" 

I  found  everywhere  this  contempt  for  politicians. 
France  shrugs  its  shoulders  at  them  all,  and  says:  "It 
is  a  game!     It  has  no  reality." 

They  pin  their  faith  to  local  initiative,  individual 
energy,  to  build  up  on  the  ruins,  yet  are  aghast  at  the 
enormity  of  the  task. 

Most  of  the  individuals  I  met  had  suffered  the  loss 
of  all  their  prewar  possessions. 

The  driver  of  a  motor  car  owned  his  own  garage  before 
the  war.  The  government  requisitioned  his  cars,  sold 
them  afterward  for  double  the  price  he  had  given, 
but  as  yet  he  has  recovered  no  indemnity,  and  is  now  a 
hired  chauffeur. 

The  old  woman  who  kept  an  inn  on  the  Menin  Road 

fled  from  it  when  the  German  shells   came   near,  and 

was  now  back  in  a  wooden  shack.     On  the  wall  was  a 

larger  poster  setting  forth  the  claims  for  damage  which 

13  i8s 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

must  be  made  to  the  government  before  a  certain  date. 
She  had  made  them  months  ago,  but  had  not  touched 
a  penny. 

So  it  was  in  millions  of  cases,  and  there  was  exaspera- 
tion, just  or  unjust,  I  know  not,  because  there  was  no 
repayment  out  of  the  national  treasury  for  losses  in- 
curred by  the  acts  of  war. 

The  lack  of  labor  in  France  Is  serious,  and  made 
worse  by  the  constant  strikes  for  higher  wages  and  by 
the  high  scale  of  wages  now  demanded  by  men  who  are 
not  much  inclined  to  work  with  their  old  industry, 
whatever  their  reward.  They  will  work  a  little  bit, 
and  then  take  a  holiday  and  enjoy  themselves.  They 
were  in  the  mud  of  the  war.  They  lived  in  trenches. 
They  were  surrounded  with  death.  They  escaped. 
.  .  .  Shall  they  not  enjoy  life  now,  like  the  profiteers 
who  did  nothing  but  get  rich? 

So  after  the  armistice  the  cafes  were  crowded.  There 
were  throngs  outside  the  cinemas.  In  Lille,  where 
conditions  were  very  bad,  they  were  not  so  bad  that 
they  stopped  the  fun  of  the  fair  or  failed  to  crowd  the 
circus  where  French  clowns  caused  shouts  of  laughter, 
and  strong  men  did  prodigious  feats,  and  Japanese 
wrestlers  defied  the  laws  of  anatomy. 

In  a  great  tent  there  were  four  thousand  people  at 
least,  under  the  glare  of  lights.  I  looked  at  their  faces, 
intense,  gaping,  laughing  at  comic  antics.  They  were 
soldiers  and  ex-soldiers  with  their  wives  and  sweethearts. 
Every  man  there  and  every  woman  knew  the  tragedy 
of  the  war  in  their  souls.  They  had  been  prisoners, 
many  of  them.  They  went  through  years  of  hell. 
Now  they  were  shouting  and  screaming  with  laughter.  It 
was  their  need  in  life.  They  must  have  laughter,  light, 
shows,  pleasure.  They  had  come  out  of  the  darkness. 
Not  even  work  must  interfere  too  much  with  their  vital 
need,  which,  in  this  afterwar  psychology,  was  amusement. 

1 86 


THE  PRICE  OF  VICTORY  IN  FRANCE 

But  as  one  man  told  me,  and  I  believed  him,  "if  the 
people  do  not  laugh  they  must  weep,  for  truly  victory 
has  not  brought  much  joy,  but  only  a  peace  which  is 
full  of  danger  and  a  knowledge  of  a  ruin  which  can  only 
be  repaired  after  many  generations." 

Cardinal  Mercier's  words  that  "Germany  is  already 
preparing  a  war  of  revenge  which  may  come  in  fifteen 
years, "  struck  a  chill  in  the  hearts  of  many  people  who 
read  these  words  in  local  papers. 

It  is  a  terrifying  idea — another  war. 

French  peasants  and  the  bourgeoisie  regret  that 
they  could  not  crush  Germany  more.  If  only  they  had 
gone  to  Berlin! 

The  idea  that  there  may  be  any  comradeship  of  democ- 
racy between  French  workers  and  German  workers,  so 
preventing  another  war,  is  held  only  by  international 
Socialists  of  the  old  type,  who  have  many  new  adherents, 
but  do  not  represent  the  majority  of  the  working  classes 
in  France. 

Many  of  them  regard  that  as  an  illusion,  and  some 
of  them  as  a  treachery. 

They  shrug  their  shoulders  at  a  gospel  of  brotherhood, 
and  say  "the  Boche  is  a  bandit,  an  assassin." 

For  England  there  is,  in  the  north,  where  our  troops 
were  known  and  where  they  fought,  a  friendly  and 
affectionate  remembrance. 

''Nous  avons  un  bon  souvenir  des  soldats  anglais,** 
iaid  an  old  peasant  woman  who  had  served  many  of 
them  behind  the  lines,  and  such  words  were  spoken  by 
many  others. 

But  that  does  not  prevent  a  growing  suspicion  in  the 
minds  of  many  French  people  that  England  has  got 
**all  the  fat,"  as  they  say,  out  of  the  peace  terms,  and 
that  she  has  waxed  fat  herself  out  of  the  war. 

It  was  no  use  telling  them  that  we  were  spending  twq 
millions  a  day  more  than  our  income, 

187 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

They  say:  "England  is  rich.  England  is  enlarging 
her  empire.  England  and  America  are  masters  of  the 
world. " 

IV 

For  some  time  there  was,  beneath  the  loud  expression 
of  joy  in  France  because  the  victory  was  hers,  a  secret 
and  sinister  bitterness  of  revolutionary  passion.  Re- 
member that  when  war  broke  out  in  19 14  the  followers 
of  Jean  Jaures,  the  Socialist  leader,  who  was  murdered 
on  the  first  day  (his  murderer  was  acquitted  at  the  end 
of  the  war),  rallied  to  the  flag  of  France  with  exalted 
patriotism.  They  said:  "We  are  the  enemies  of  war, 
but  this  was  forced  on  us.  This  is  the  war  to  end  war. 
By  killing  German  militarism  we  shall  destroy  our  own, 
for  there  will  be  no  need  of  it.  By  defeating  German 
tyranny  we  shall  gain  greater  liberty  ourselves.  There 
will  be  a  *  sacred  union'  of  classes,  and  labor,  which 
will  save  France,  by  its  body  and  by  its  soul,  shall  get 
greater  reward.  Capitalism  of  the  old  evil  kind  will 
be  dethroned,  and  capital  and  labor  shall  go  hand  in 
hand,  not  as  enemies,  but  as  friends  and  partners." 

Over  and  over  again  I  heard  French  soldiers  say  those 
things  in  the  early  days  when  all  France  was  stirred  by 
passionate  enthusiasm  and  the  spirit  of  sacrifice.  .  .  . 
They  left  off  saying  them  when  the  war  settled  down 
into  trenches,  when  slaughter  was  piled  up  month  after 
month,  when  it  seemed  unending,  and  when  the  poliusy 
in  those  wet  ditches,  thought  back  to  Paris,  where  the 
politicians  and  the  rich  seemed  to  be  quite  comfortable, 
making  lots  of  money  out  of  army  contracts,  and  ready 
to  go  on  fighting — by  proxy — for  years  and  years. 
What  bitterness,  what  suspicion,  what  hatred  of  poli- 
ticians and  profiteers,  was  in  the  hearts  of  the  French 
fighting  men  may  be  read  in  the  books  of  Henri  Bar- 
busse;  and  I,  myself,  talking  to  those  poliusy  in  their 

i88 


THE  PRICE  OF  VICTORY  IN  FRANCE 

trenches  and  dugouts  and  in  ruined  villages  behind 
the  Hne,  have  heard  all  that  passion  of  resentment.  It 
seemed  to  these  men — and  seems  to  some  of  them  now 
• — ^that  Jean  Jaures,  their  old  leader,  was  right,  after 
all,  when  he  said  that  modern  warfare  was  made  to 
bolster  up  one  set  of  capitalists  against  another  set 
whose  markets  they  coveted,  or  whose  power  they 
feared,  and  that  the  peoples  who  fought  and  died  were 
not  fighting  altogether  for  their  own  liberties  or  for 
their  own  reward.  After  the  war,  when  the  French 
troops  were  demobilized  and  came  back  to  the  little 
homes,  stinted  of  the  barest  necessities  of  life  because  of 
the  rising  prices,  while  French  society  of  the  well-to-do 
classes  rioted  in  a  mad  kind  of  luxury  during  the  peace 
negotiations,  these  men  became  even  more  bitter,  and 
their  spirit  was  menacing. 

I  went,  one  night  in  Paris,  to  a  meeting  of  a  society 
called  Clarte.  It  was  founded  by  the  friends  of  that 
French  author,  Henri  Barbusse,  whose  book,  Le  Feu, 
gives  the  most  realistic  and  dreadful  picture  of  the  ag- 
onies and  horrors  of  modern  warfare,  and  contains  the 
fiercest  accusation  of  the  evil  elements  in  civilization 
which  led  up  to  the  European  war.  Clarte  means 
clearness — clarity — and  the  idea  of  the  society  is  to 
bring  together  numbers  of  young  men  in  France  and 
other  countries  who  went  through  the  war  and  who  are 
able  to  think  clearly  on  the  problems  of  life,  the  struc- 
ture of  society,  and  the  means  by  which  liberty,  brother- 
hood, and  peace  may  prevail  over  injustice,  hatred,  and 
the  spirit  of  war.  It  was  a  night  in  August  when  I 
went  to  a  back  street  in  Paris  and  the  rooms  in  which 
this  meeting  was  being  held.  The  rooms  were  so 
crowded  that  I  could  hardly  push  my  way  in,  and  so 
hot  that  one  woman  fainted,  and  sweat  poured  down 
the  foreheads  of  French  soldiers,  and  the  whole  company 
looked  half  stifled.     It  was  a  queer  company,  made  up 

189 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

of  many  types  and  classes  of  men  and  women.  Keeping 
the  door  was  a  handsome  young  officer  in  the  sky-blue 
uniform  of  the  Chasseurs ^  wearing  many  medals  for 
valor  and  service.  Here  and  there  were  other  officers 
and  private  soldiers  in  uniform,  some  of  them  scarred 
or  maimed,  and  one  of  them  blinded.  Those  were 
the  best  types  in  the  room.  Others  were  clearly  of 
foreign  origin,  including  many  Jews  and  Slavs,  with 
rather  sinister  faces  of  a  kind  I  have  often  seen  in 
revolutionary  gatherings  in  London  and  other  capitals 
of  Europe.  With  them  were  young  women  with  black 
eyes  staring  moodily  out  of  dead-white  faces,  and  young 
men  with  long,  uncombed  hair  and  neurasthenic  eyes, 
roving  restlessly,  and  sullen  in  their  gaze.  On  a  small 
wooden  platform  sat  the  secretary  of  the  society,  a  young 
man  also,  smartly  dressed,  dapper,  hke  a  clerk  in  a  bank, 
and  with  the  sharp,  self-confident  manner  of  a  com- 
mercial traveler.  He  explained  the  objects  of  the 
society  and  the  progress  he  had  to  report. 

Standing  there  at  the  back  of  the  room,  with  my  collar 
going  limp  in  the  heat,  and  the  hot  breath  of  the  people 
about  me  making  me  feel  sick  and  faint,  I  listened  to 
the  program  of  Clarte  for  the  reformation  of  life.  It 
was  nothing  more  nor  less  than  the  Bolshevism  of  Lenin 
translated  into  French.  It  advocated  the  abolition  of 
private  property,  the  ruthless  destruction  of  capitalism, 
the  control  by  the  laboring  masses  of  all  the  sources 
and  machinery  of  wealth,  the  promotion  of  an  inter- 
national fellowship  among  the  workers  of  the  world. 
Old  stuff,  the  revolutionary  "dope,"  the  old  class  hatred, 
and  the  old  call  to  violence.  The  company  listened  to  it 
in  silence  except  for  the  noise  of  their  breathing.  I 
watched  the  faces  of  the  young  French  soldiers,  to 
whom  all  this  dangerous  philosophy  was  new,  perhaps, 
but  I  could  not  guess  the  effect  it  had  upon  them,  nor 
read  the  riddle  of  those  mask-like  faces  still  bronzed 

190 


THE  PRICE  OF  VICTORY  IN  FRANCE 

with  sun  and  wind  as  when  I  had  seen  them  under  steel 
helmets  staring  across  No-Man's  Land  from  their 
trenches  and  Hstening  to  the  rush  of  shells  which  threat- 
ened them  with  death.  I  thought  back  to  bitter  words 
I  had  heard  from  their  Hps  in  those  days,  their  words 
of  scorn  for  politicians,  profiteers,  corrupt  society, 
luxurious  women,  old  men  who  gained  by  the  death  of 
youth.  Out  of  that  bitterness,  unjust  very  often, 
overcharged  with  their  resentment  against  the  fate 
which  had  thrust  them  into  the  ditches  of  death,  and 
now,  inflamed  by  the  thought  of  a  poor  reward  for  all 
their  suffering,  had  come  this  spirit  of  revolt,  this  desire 
for  sweeping  and  violent  change,  expressed  in  the  sub- 
versive gospel  of  Clarte.  ...  A  dangerous  crowd,  yet 
not  big  enough  in  numbers,  not  representative  enough 
of  French  mentality,  to  be  any  real  menace  to  the  secu- 
rity of  the  French  government  and  state. 

It  was  the  young  officer  in  the  Fouragere  who  explained 
to  me  the  meaning  and  purpose  of  the  Clarte  movement. 

He  spoke  of  the  horrors  of  the  war,  and  shrugged  his 
shoulders,  and  said:  "You  know  all  about  that.  Let  us 
not  waste  words  on  it.  .  .  .  Men  who  went  through 
that  business  have  come  out  changed,  with  new  ideas. 
In  the  trenches  they  said,  'This  must  not  happen 
again.'  Then  they  went  farther  than  that  and  said; 
*To  prevent  this  happening  again  we  must  alter 
the  relations  of  people  with  one  another,  and  kill  all  the 
old  ideas  which  led  to  this  massacre.  Society  must 
start  afresh,  on  new  lines,  not  marked  out  by  frontiers 
of  hatred.  Working  people  of  all  classes  must  get 
together  and  recognize  that  they  have  common  interests, 
to  get  on  with  their  work  in  peace,  without  being  flung 
against  one  another  by  people  on  top  who  make  wealth 
out  of  them,  or  by  their  own  passions,  obedient  to 
foolish  old  traditions.'" 

He  pointed  to  a  few  sentences  In  a  manifesto  of  the 

191 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

new  league:  "The  war  has  broken  the  mask  of  things. 
It  has  brought  to  hght  the  lies,  the  old  errors,  the  clever 
sophistry  which  made  the  past  a  long  martyrdom  of 
justice.  Our  present  need  is  to  organize  social  life 
according  to  the  laws  of  reason.  It  is  the  Intellectuals 
who  must  prepare  the  reign  of  the  spirit  over  that  of 
material  force." 

While  the  young  officer  talked  to  me  I  thought  of 
something  that  had  happened  a  long  time  ago,  very 
close  to  the  room  in  which  we  sat — a  Feast  to  the  Goddess 
of  Reason,  whose  archpriest  was  Robespierre,  after  a 
Reign  of  Terror.  Were  these  the  same  old  ideas  clothed 
in  new  phrases .? 

"The  principles  of  a  just  society  are  simple,"  say 
these  young  men  of  France,  though  I  shook  my  head 
and  laughed  when  I  heard  that  word  "simple."  .  .  . 
"All  great  thinkers,  all  great  moralists,  all  founders  of 
religion  have  always  agreed  on  the  principles.  Reality 
is  reasonable." 

I  heard  other  ** axioms"  read  in  that  crowded  room 
to  that  strange  little  crowd  of  French  "intellectuals": 

"Power  ought  to  be  common  to  all,  as  an  ideal.  Only 
work,  manual  or  intellectual,  ought  to  be  paid  for. 
Speculation  is  a  crime  against  the  crowd.  Heritage 
is  a  theft." 

Those  who  prepare  for  war  prepare  wars. " 
It  is  thought  which  has  created  progress.     Men  of 
thought  must  lend  their  life  to  progress." 

"Those  who  do  nothing  are  the  militants  of  the  status 
quo." 

A  man  by  my  side  said,  "If  I  stay  here  I  shall  stifle, 
and  I  have  heard  these  ideas  before." 

He  used  his  shoulder  to  push  his  way  out,  and  I 
followed  him.  We  talked  together  under  the  trees  of 
a  dark  street  where  the  air  was  fresh.  Under  those 
trees  many  young  Frenchmen,  through  the  centuries, 

192 


THE  PRICE  OF  VICTORY  IN  FRANCE 

have  talked  about  idealism,  brotherhood  of  man,  social 
contracts,  the  reign  of  Reason.  The  man  by  my  side 
was,  I  should  say,  a  mechanic,  and  something  in  his 
deep-set  eyes  told  me  that  he  had  been  through  the 
realities  of  war. 

"What  do  you  think  of  it  all.?"  I  asked. 

He  laughed,  not  in  a  mocking  way,  but  with  a  kind  of 
shrug  in  his  spirit.  "Comrades  of  mine  used  to  talk 
like  that  in  the  trenches,  until  they  had  their  heads 
blown  off.  .  .  .  There  is  some  truth  in  it.  Society  is 
all  wrong,  somehow.  We  ought  to  build  something 
better  out  of  the  ruin  of  the  war.  But  human  nature, 
monsieur,  is  greedy,  cruel,  and  stupid  in  the  mass.  Ideals 
are  at  the  mercy  of  low  passions.  Look  at  the  world 
now — after  the  war!  I  see  no  approach  to  the  brother- 
hood of  man.  We  are  beginning  new  hatreds,  pre- 
paring perhaps  for  new  wars,  worse  than  the  last." 

"Then  you  don't  believe  in  the  movement  of  the 
Clarte?"  I  asked. 

He  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

"It  is  playing  in  a  literary  way  with  revolutionary 
ideals  which  are  at  work  among  the  masses.  They  will 
write  articles;  they  will  bring  out  a  paper;  they  will 
hold  conferences.  The  police  will  not  interfere  because 
they  are  men  of  letters.  .  .  .  But  it  is  the  high  price  of 
food  and  the  falsity  of  German  pledges  which  will  move 
the  masses.     The  war  has  left  us  with  much  trouble." 

He  shook  hands  with  me  and  said,  "American?" 

"No,  English." 

He  shook  hands  again. 

"England,  too,  has  her  troubles,  like  all  the  world." 


In  spite  of  many  currents  of  bitter  thoughts  in  the 
minds  of  the  French  people,  there  is  no  spirit  of  revo- 

193 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

lution  in  France,  but  rather  an  intense  emotional 
desire  for  stable  government,  good  leadership,  economy, 
and  reconstruction  which  will-  bring  back  prosperity 
and  peace  to  France.  So  far  from  desiring  to  abolish 
private  property,  the  French  peasant,  who  is  his  own 
proprietor,  the  French  shopkeeper  and  small  tradesman, 
the  clerk  and  professional  man,  the  large  merchant  and 
the  manufacturer,  wish  to  increase  the  safeguards  of 
property,  to  be  more  fully  assured  of  the  interest  on 
money  invested  in  government  bonds,  and  to  be  repaid 
for  all  those  loans  which  were  made  to  Russia  before  and 
during  the  war.  Their  anger,  their  discontent,  their 
utter  disgust  with  the  effects  of  the  peace  treaty  are 
due  to  a  sense  of  fear  that  their  private  property  is 
not  safeguarded  and  that  they  will  get  nothing  out  of 
victory  to  repay  their  losses. 

All  the  foreign  policy  of  France,  all  the  irritation  of 
the  French  people  with  those  who  were  her  friends,  are 
due  to  their  desperate  anxiety  to  make  their  victory 
real,  permanent,  and  profitable.  France  is  haunted 
by  the  fear  that  her  frontiers  are  no  safer  now  than 
they  were  in  1914,  in  spite  of  all  her  immense  sacrifice 
and  losses  and  all  her  brilliant  victories,  and  that  she 
is  not  sure  of  peace  itself  for  more  than  another  spell 
of  preparation  for  war.  She  realizes  with  dreadful 
misgivings  that  her  population  is  declining  steadily. 
In  1920  there  were  220,000  more  deaths  than  births, 
and  in  another  twenty,  thirty,  or  forty  years  the  man- 
power of  France  will  be  terribly  less  in  proportion  to 
the  Germans  on  the  other  side  of  her  frontiers  than  it 
was  in  August  of  19 14.  What  if  Germany  recovers  her 
wealth  and  strength.^  What  if  Germany,  unrepentant 
and  passionate  for  vengeance,  allies  herself  with  Russia, 
which  has  betrayed  France  and  hates  her.^  What  if  the 
German  peoples,  now  split  into  smaller  states,  with 
Austria  cut  oflf  from  the  supplies  of  life,  regroup  them- 

194 


THE  PRICE  OF  VICTORY  IN  FRANCE 

selves  and  rearm  themselves,  in  alliance  with  Russian 
Bolshevism,  or  a  Russian  autocracy  that  may  follow 
Bolshevism?  Dreadful,  disturbing  thoughts,  that  are 
in  the  brain  of  many  French  men  and  women  not  only 
in  Ministerial  chambers,  but  in  city  offices  and  shop 
parlors,  and  little  rooms  in  apartment  houses. 

As  far  as  Germany  is  concerned,  France  is  determined 
to  prevent  her  economic  recovery  at  all  costs,  by  the 
strict  enforcement  of  the  peace  terms,  which,  if  carried 
out  to  the  letter,  will  strip  her  to  the  bone  and  keep  her 
poor  for  at  least  a  generation.  However  hard  she  works, 
the  product  of  her  toil  will  be  seized  to  repay  the  damage 
of  war  in  the  Allied  countries.  Whatever  her  enter- 
prise in  other  countries,  the  profits  of  her  industrial 
genius  will  be  taken  if  she  does  not  pay  to  the  full  the 
bill  which  France  and  England,  Italy  and  Belgium,  and 
all  the  other  countries  whom  she  warred  against  have 
presented  to  her.  If  it  is  impossible  for  Germany  to  pay 
all  those  claims,  or  if  she  tries  to  dodge  them,  it  is  a 
sure  thing  that  France  will  try  to  seize  her  future  credits 
and  keep  her  with  her  nose  to  the  grindstone.  If  need 
be,  France  will  seize  the  left  bank  of  the  Rhine,  and  if 
need  be  again,  sit  down  in  Berlin.  That  is  the  clear- 
cut,  definite  policy  of  France,  coinciding  with  the  senti- 
ment of  the  people  with  regard  to  the  Germans,  and  it 
is  for  that  reason  that  they  are  perplexed,  irritated, 
even  exasperated  with  England,  Italy,  and  the  United 
States  because  they  seem  to  see  a  different  and  con- 
flicting point  of  view,  a  certain  yielding  weakness  to 
the  Germans,  and  actual  acts  of  concession  which 
seem  to  France  a  betrayal  and  a  breach  of  friendship. 

So  it  is  with  England's  agreement  with  Germany  not  to 
seize  the  postwar  values  of  German  enterprise  abroad 
in  the  event  of  her  inability  to  pay  the  entire  sum  of 
indemnities  by  the  times  required.  France  is  enraged 
with  that  concession,  which  weakens  her  power  of  keep- 

195 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

ing  Germany  in  a  permanent  state  of  poverty.  She 
abominated  the  pressure  brought  to  bear  on  her,  and 
the  promises  she  was  forced  to  make  under  pressure, 
to  present  a  bill  of  claims  to  Germany  based  upon  the 
present  immediate  capacity  of  Germany  to  pay.  France 
said,  with  a  great  deal  of  truth  and  justice,  it  is  absurd 
to  reduce  our  claims  now  because  Germany  is  in  a  state 
of  ruin.  Twenty  years  from  now,  by  industry,  by  the 
discovery  of  some  new  chemical  secret,  by  some  inven- 
tion needed  by  all  the  world,  Germany  may,  and  prob- 
ably will,  be  the  richest  country  in  Europe.  Why, 
then,  should  we  be  in  a  hurry  to  present  our  bill  for 
immediate  payment,  based  upon  present  resources,  when 
her  future  wealth  is  incalculable? 


VI 

Before  the  final  presentation  of  the  Bill  of  Costs  to 
Germany,  at  the  end  of  April,  1921,  there  was  a  severe 
strain  upon  the  friendly  relations  between  France  and 
Great  Britain. 

England's  view  was  based  upon  a  different  line  of 
reasoning,  which  clashed  with  the  French  view  in  a 
fundamental  way.  When  I  say  England's  view  I 
mean  the  unofficial,  instinctive  reasoning  of  the  ordinary 
Englishman  who  looks  at  realities  without  passion  and 
in  a  business  way.  He  said,  and  still  thinks,  more  or 
less:  **This  idea  of  keeping  Germany  poor  for  ever  and 
ever,  of  holding  her  in  the  position  of  a  slave  state 
working  for  the  rest  of  Europe,  so  that  all  the  profits  of 
her  industry  go  to  the  payment  of  her  debts  for  several 
generations,  is  ridiculous  and  unsound.  In  the  first 
place,  there  will  be  no  recovery  in  Europe,  in  an  economic 
way,  so  long  as  Germany  is  poverty-stricken.  We  want 
to  trade  with  Germany.  We  want  to  sell  our  goods  in 
German  markets.     We  want  Germany  to  buy  our  raw 

196 


THE  PRICE  OF  VICTORY  IN  FRANCE 

material  and  send  us  back  manufactured  goods  in 
exchange.  Italy  needs  that  more  than  we  do.  Italy- 
is  in  a  bad  way  because  Austria  and  Germany,  her  best 
markets,  cannot  pay  for  her  produce.  The  United 
States  want  the  German  markets.  All  the  world 
is  hit  because  central  Europe  is  paralyzed.  But,  apart 
from  all  that,  which  is  common  sense,  the  French  policy 
is  enormously  dangerous.  They  think  that  Germany 
will  submit  to  the  position  of  a  slave  state.  Germany 
won't.  It  is  not  in  human  nature.  Certainly  not  in 
the  human  nature  of  a  people  sullen  with  defeat,  re- 
membering their  strength  and  pride.  If  the  pressure 
is  made  too  severe,  the  punishment  unbearable,  Germany 
will  either  yield  to  anarchy  and  carry  the  disease  of 
Bolshevism  to  the  frontiers  of  France,  or  (which  is  much 
more  likely)  will  form  a  close  alliance  with  the  inevitable 
autocracy  of  Russia  under  Lenin  or  some  other,  which 
will  substitute  a  military  regime  for  communistic  the- 
ories, and  then  there  will  be  another  and  more  dreadful 
war  which  France  will  be  too  weak  to  resist.  All 
civilization,  as  we  know  it,  will  go  down,  and  we  cannot 
afford  to  take  that  risk.  We  must  not  ask  of  Germany 
more  than  human  nature  will  stand,  and  if  possible  we 
must  make  her  a  peaceful  partner  in  some  kind  of  a 
League  of  Nations,  working  with  all  of  us  for  the  regen- 
eration of  a  stricken  Europe. " 

To  that  argument  the  French  replied  with  scorn  and 
laughter,  dubbing  it  the  weakness  of  sentimental  gibber- 
ing coupled  with  the  treachery  of  forgetful  friends. 

The  French  Press,  inspired  by  their  Foreign  Office, 
revealed  a  bellicose  ardor  which  was  deplored  by  that 
disillusioned,  cynical,  but  wise  old  Frenchman,  Anatole 
France,  and  a  small  minority  of  far-seeing  men.  Even 
some  of  the  most  radical  papers,  like  the  Rappely 
clamored  for  the  immediate  occupation  of  the  whole 
of  Germany.    The  editor  of  the  Democratie  Nouvelle, 

197 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

another  radical  organ,  insisted  daily  upon  the  occupa- 
tion of  the  Ruhr  Valley.  M.  Maurice  Barres,  one  of 
the  most  famous  authors  of  France,  was  passionate  in 
his  desire  for  the  left  bank  of  the  Rhine,  and  tried  to 
win  over  English  opinion  to  that  policy  by  the  most 
fantastic  argument.  "It  is  necessary,"  he  said,  "to  the 
security  of  England.  England  needs  a  zone  of  security 
on  the  Rhine.  Let  her  allow  us  to  organize  it!"  In 
those  words  he  abandoned  the  French  argument  that 
the  Treaty  of  Versailles  must  be  kept  to  the  letter  as  a 
sacred  document.  He  also  challenged  the  English 
view,  deep  seated  in  every  English  brain,  I  know,  that 
if  the  French  were  to  take  over  the  left  bank  of  the  Rhine 
with  its  immense  German  populations,  the  certainty  of 
another  war  would  be  complete  and  both  France  and 
England  would  have  to  spend  all  their  remaining  strength 
and  all  their  remaining  wealth,  or  poverty,  in  preparing 
for  the  next  struggle.  In  the  most  advanced  socialist 
papers  of  France  there  was  a  prolonged  campaign  of 
Anglophobia,  due  to  this  difference  in  policy,  and  the 
editor  of  L'CEuvre,  which  used  to  be  pacifist  and  inter- 
national, harked  back  to  a  narrow  and  bitter  nationahsm, 
allied  with  violent  attacks  upon  England,  whose  dead 
lie  thick  in  the  fields  of  France. 

All  this  stirring  up  of  passion  and  prejudice  was  the 
prelude  to  the  political  pressure  brought  to  bear  upon 
the  British  government  by  Aristide  Briand  and  the 
French  Foreign  Office,  before  the  final  settlement  of 
the  German  reparations.  Briand,  former  SociaUst,  and 
then  Prime  Minister  of  France,  found  himself  appointed 
as  the  representative  of  French  nationalism  to  engage 
in  an  intellectual  duel  with  Lloyd  George,  former 
Radical  and  now  head  of  a  Conservative  and  Imperial 
Coalition.  Briand  chose  his  weapon,  which  was  force, 
based  upon  the  strength  of  the  French  armies.  He 
galled  up  the  class  of  19 19  recruits,  the  lads  of  twenty- 

1^8 


THE  PRICE  OF  VICTORY  IN  FRANCE 

two,  and  moved  them  toward  the  Ruhr,  ready  for  an 
immediate  advance.  Speaking  in  the  French  Chamber 
on  April  12,  192 1,  he  put  the  case  with  brutal  frankness 
and  simpHcity  so  that  the  Germans,  and  incidentally 
the  British,  might  understand.  "On  the  first  of  May 
Germany  will  find  herself  confronted  with  the  state- 
ment of  her  obligations  and  how  she  has  fulfilled  them. 
We  have  a  right  to  execution.  The  bailiff  having  been 
sent,  the  gendarmes  must  accompany  him  if  the  debtor 
persists  in  being  recalcitrant.  It  is  not  a  question  of 
war;  it  is  a  question  of  pure  justice."  He  intimated 
quite  clearly  that  France  was  prepared  to  act  alone. 
They  had  the  arms.     They  were  ready  to  use  them. 

It  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  Briand  had  the  mass 
of  his  people  behind  him.  Press  propaganda,  as  well  as 
years  of  disappointment  with  the  peace,  had  created  a 
sense  of  rage.  Yet  there  were  men  and  women  in  France 
who  were  not  pleased  at  the  sight  of  their  boys  leaving 
the  plow  again  and  putting  on  uniforms.  It  re- 
called too  sharply  the  dreadful  days  of  '14.  Yet  most 
of  them  said,  "Perhaps  it  is  the  only  way  of  getting 
our  rights."  Paris,  always  most  inflammable,  seemed 
in  a  set  mood  for  a  march  on  the  Ruhr,  whether  the 
Germans  agreed  to  pay  or  not.  To  capture  the  great 
German  factories  of  Essen,  the  coal  fields,  arsenals,  and 
industries,  and  hold  them  to  ransom,  seemed  to  them 
the  best  policy  and  the  best  business.  It  would  keep 
Germany  weak  and  drained.  It  would  cut  off  fifteen 
million  Germans  from  their  Fatherland.  It  would 
provide  much  wealth  at  the  expense  of  German  labor. 
So  the  population  talked  over  cafe  tables. 

VII 

Meanwhile,  the  experts  were  working   feverishly   at 
figures,  reckoning  out  the  resources  of  Germany,  her 

199 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

taxable  capacity,  the  utmost  burden  she  could  bear. 
It  is  doubtful  whether  even  the  German  experts  had 
accurate  figures  before  them.  From  a  private  source, 
well  informed,  I  received  information  that  all  classes 
in  Germany  were  evading  internal  and  external  taxation 
by  hiding  what  wealth  they  had,  transferring  enormous 
sums  into  neutral  countries,  dodging  income-tax  re- 
turns, hoarding  paper  money,  buying  precious  stones 
and  objects  of  art  of  marketable  value  which  do  not 
appear  in  any  available  figures.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  big  German  trusts,  organized  by  Stinnes  and 
other  magnates,  had  been  developing  industry  with 
enormous  strides,  and  by  the  pooling  of  capital,  raw 
material,  and  profits  were  paying  high  dividends  to 
their  shareholders.  It  was  clear  that  the  estimates 
on  each  side  would  never  agree.  The  Paris  settlement 
fixed  five  thousand  millions  as  the  cash  value  of  Ger- 
many's obligations,  with  a  twelve-per-cent  levy  on 
German  exports.  The  payment  spread  over  forty-two 
years  at  five  per  cent  interest  would  total  eleven  thou- 
sand three  hundred  millions.  The  last  German  offer, 
represented  as  being  the  utmost  they  could  pay,  recog- 
nized a  cash  obligation  of  two  thousand  five  hundred 
million  pounds,  reaching  a  total  of  ten  thousand  million 
pounds  spread  over  an  unstated  number  of  years  with 
interest.  This  last  offer  was  transmitted  to  the  United 
States  of  America  with  a  plea  of  the  arbitration  of  that 
country,  the  decision  of  which  Germany  pledged  her- 
self to  accept.  It  was  a  last  desperate  attempt  to  split 
the  Allies,  for  if  the  United  States  had  accepted  this 
office  and  had  abated  the  terms  to  Germany  upon  fair 
consideration,  a  storm  of  fury  would  have  broken  out 
in  France  which  would  have  been  dangerous  to  the 
peace  of  Europe.  England's  agreement  with  the 
United  States,  which  would  have  been  certain,  would 
have  led  to  the  breaking  of  friendship  with  the  French 

200 


THE  PRICE  OF  VICTORY  IN  FRANCE 

people.  President  Harding  and  his  advisers  saw  the 
danger  of  this  trap,  the  utter  impossibihty  of  acceptance, 
and  they  notified  very  quickly  to  Germany,  after  cable 
communications  with  the  French  and  British  govern- 
ments, that  they  did  not  regard  the  German  offer  as 
acceptable. 

Historic  meetings  took  place  between  Lloyd  George 
and  Briand,  with  Marshal  Foch,  Count  Sforza,  the 
Japanese  ambassador,  and  others  in  attendance.  The 
experts  of  the  Reparations  Commission  now  fixed  six 
thousand  six  hundred  million  pounds  as  the  total 
obligation  in  cash  value  to  be  accepted  by  Germany 
not  later  than  May  ist.  All  the  other  clauses  of  the 
treaty  respecting  disarmament  and  the  trial  of  war 
prisoners  were  to  be  strictly  enforced. 

The    differences    between    the    two    Premiers    were 
mainly  limited  to  the  question  of  "sanctions,"  the  form 
of  pressure,  and  the  date  by  which  Germany  was  to  be 
compelled  to  pay.     Briand,  with  Marshal  Foch  at  his 
right  hand,  insisted  that  on  May  ist  the  French  armies 
should  march  into  the  Ruhr  if  Germany  had  not  sub- 
mitted.    Lloyd  George  held  out  for  a  period  of  grace. 
Instinctively  and  intellectually  the   Prime  Minister  of 
England   shrank   from  the   thought  of  the   occupation 
of  the  Ruhr.     It  seemed  to  him  a  policy  of  extreme  dan- 
ger.    He  did  not  need  the  private  protests  of  a  group 
of  British  bankers,  and  of  Mr.  Asquith,  Lord   Robert 
Cecil,  and    other    statesmen   (though    their  arguments 
enforced  his  own  convictions)  to  feel  profoundly  that 
such   an  occupation  would   mean  the   "withering"   of 
German  industry   so  that  the   indemnity  could   never 
be  paid,  and  the  fatal  assurance  of  a  new  war  in  the  un- 
known  but  not   distant   future.     Those   arguments   he 
placed  before  M.  Briand  with  a  certain  touch  of  brutality 
which  he  can  use  at  times  with  great  effect,  but  they 
were  countered   by  the  burning  resolve  of  Briand  to 

14  20I 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 


"act"  alone,  if  need  be,  on  behalf  of  France,  whose 
patience  was  exhausted,  as  Cardinal  Dubois  wrote  to 
the  Cardinal  Archbishop  of  Cologne. 

Lloyd  George  was  faced  with  a  stupendous  dilemma. 
The  Germans  were  watching  this  psychological  and 
historical  drama,  with  full  understanding  of  its  sig- 
nificance, ready  to  take  advantage  of  the  slightest  sign 
of  weakening.  The  whole  Treaty  of  Versailles  would 
fall  with  a  crash  if  the  divergence  of  views  between 
France  and  England  widened  much  further  or  did  not 
find  some  bridge  of  compromise.  A  compromise  was 
found.  Six  days'  grace  were  given  to  the  Germans  for 
unconditional  acceptance.  Refusing  to  send  British 
troops  into  the  Ruhr — "not  a  man  and  not  a  gun" — 
Lloyd  George  agreed  to  lend  the  British  fleet  for  a  block- 
ade of  German  ports  if  Germany  refused  to  submit  to 
the  terms.  At  the  same  time  the  German  ambassador 
was  privately  notified  that  if  his  government  accepted, 
the  British  government  would  on  their  side  uphold 
the  spirit  of  the  treaty  with  the  strictest  regard  to 
German  interests,  as  far  as  they  were  safeguarded  and 
as  far  as  our  honor  was  pledged,  especially  in  regard 
to  Upper  Silesia,  coveted  by  the  Poles  with  the  tacit 
approval  of  the  French. 

The  German  government,  reconstituted  under  Doctor 
Wirth,  accepted  without  reservations,  and  of  all  men  in 
the  world,  Lloyd  George  must  have  breathed  a  sigh  of 
thankfulness.  He  made  no  secret  of  his  dread  of  the 
threatened  seizure  of  the  Ruhr  by  France.  He  did  not 
believe  it  possible  that  German  workmen  could  be  per- 
suaded to  serve  their  factories  with  enthusiastic  indus- 
try under  the  stimulus  of  foreign  control  by  foreign 
bayonets.  He  made  no  disguise  of  his  conviction  that 
the  economic  recovery  of  Europe  depends  a  great  deal 
on   whether    the   German   workmen   will    continue    to 

202 


THE   PRICE  OF  VICTORY  IN  FRANCE 

work.  And  he  foresaw  the  time  when  Germany,  in 
alliance  with  Russia,  would  inevitably  declare  a  war 
of  vengeance  if  she  were  pressed  to  the  limit  of  human 
patience. 

Those  views,  held  by  the  Prime  Minister  at  least  for  a 
few  days — though  God  alone  could  tell  how  quickly  he 
would  shift  his  ground  or  what  undercurrents  of  polit- 
ical or  other  interests  had  impelled  him  in  that  direc- 
tion— did,  I  think,  represent  the  average  opinion  of  the 
British  people.  The}^  wished  a  fair  deal  to  be  given  to 
Germany,  if  she  agreed  to  pay  up  and  made  honest 
efforts  to  do  so.  They  were  afraid  of  an  entry  into  the 
Ruhr,  believing  that  it  would  guarantee  a  future  war — 
and  the  idea  of  a  future  war  was  to  them  sickening  and 
horrible  and  insane. 

Aristide  Briand  departed  from  England  in  a  state 
of  gloomy  exaltation.  To  the  photographers  on  board 
his  ship  he  said  that  nothing  v/ould  give  him  greater 
pleasure  than  to  see  a  film  showing  the  British  fleet 
steaming  into  Hamburg.  It  was  the  blurting  out  of 
his  secret  hope  that  the  Germans  would  not  accept, 
and  that  the  "sanctions"  would  have  to  be  appHed. 
The  fire  eaters  in  France,  and  the  passion  of  light-headed 
people,  were  disappointed  by  the  German  acceptance. 
It  was  received  coldly,  without  thankfulness  or  enthu- 
siasm. They  disbelieved  in  the  German  promises  to 
pay  more  than  the  first  installments.  It  is  certain 
that  many  of  them  disbelieved  the  German  power  to 
pay.  What  they  wanted  was  the  forcible  possession  of 
German  industry  and  means  of  wealth,  which  they  would 
ransom  and  then  ruin  as — do  not  let  us  forget  that — 
Germany  had  ransomed  and  ruined  the  industry  of 
Lille  and  other  French  cities  in  the  time  of  war.  There 
was  hardly  a  Frenchman  who  could  see  that  the  ruin 
of  German   industry   would    mean   the   final   downfall 

of  the   European  trading  system  upon  which  all  our 

203 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

hope    of   recovered    prosperity    depends.     France    felt 
thwarted  by  her  friends. 


VIII 

The  attitude  of  France  toward  Russia  had  been 
another  cause  of  ill  will  and  distress  in  French  mentality. 
Russia's  desertion  of  the  AUied  cause  when  revolution 
broke  out  and  led  to  the  peace  of  Brest-Litovsk  was  a 
frightful  blow  to  France  and  to  all  of  us.  In  the  French 
mind  there  was  no  allowance  made  for  the  immense, 
bloody,  and  futile  sacrifices  of  Russian  soldiers,  sent 
forward  like  sheep  to  the  slaughter,  badly  equipped, 
often  without  arms  and  ammunition,  against  the  flail 
of  German  machine  guns  and  the  storm  of  fire  from 
German  artillery.  No  allowance  for  the  savage  rage 
of  the  Russian  masses  against  a  corrupt,  inefficient,  and 
sometimes  treacherous  government,  so  that  at  least 
they  cried  out  in  despair  and  passion,  "Our  enemy  is 
not  in  front  of  us,  but  behind  us!" 

One  reason  for  the  intense  bitterness  of  the  French 
against  the  Russians  is  easy  to  understand,  and  of 
immense  importance  to  the  individual  Frenchman. 
Years  before  the  war  the  French  government  had  backed 
the  issue  of  Russian  bonds  and  had  encouraged  its 
people  to  subscribe  to  them.  Every  little  shopkeeper, 
every  bourgeois  with  a  sum  of  money  to  invest,  had 
bought  Russian  stock,  which  was  the  price  and  pledge 
of  Russian  military  aid  in  the  event  of  war  with  Germany. 
Now,  with  the  Russian  plunge  into  Bolshevism,  all  that 
money  was  jeopardized  and  probably  irrecoverable. 
The  thought  worked  like  madness  in  the  brains  of  the 
French  middle  classes.  It  dictated  the  policy  of  the 
French  Foreign  Office  and  French  War  Office,  who 
supported  every  counter-revolutionary  general,  pro- 
viding him  with  arms,  ammunition,  and  money,  in  the 

204 


THE  PRrCE  OF  VICTORY  IN  FRANCE 

hope  that  the  Lenin  regime  would  be  overthrown  by  a 
new  dictator  who  would  redeem  the  Russian  bonds. 
Kolchak,  Denikin,  Wrangel  in  turn  became  the  hope 
of  France,  and  their  successive  disasters  fell  like  icy 
waters  on  the  spirit  of  the  French  people. 

Yet  it  is  profoundly  significant  that  the  soldiers  of 
France,  the  men  who  had  come  out  tired  and  resentful 
from  the  Great  War,  exhausted  morally  and  mentally, 
would  not  engage  themselves  in  any  adventure  on  behalf 
of  Russia  which  would  lead  to  renewed  fighting  on  their 
part.  At  the  mere  rumor  that  some  of  them  were 
going  to  be  sent  to  Russia,  two  regiments  broke  into 
something  like  mutiny.  French  policy  was  therefore 
directed  to  the  urging  on  of  other  peoples  against  the 
Russian  Bolsheviki  and  ardently  encouraged  Poland  in 
her  "offensive-defensive"  warfare,  which,  after  many 
setbacks  and  a  retreat  which  looked  like  final  disaster, 
rallied  under  French  generalship  and  certainly  inflicted 
on  Trotzky's  Red  armies  the  most  damaging  defeat 
they  had  ever  suffered.  France  would  have  no  peace 
with  Red  Russia,  and,  though  Europe  was  suffering 
hunger  and  dearth  in  many  countries  for  lack  of  Russian 
trade  and  grain,  France  resented  with  exceeding  wrath 
certain  tentative  proposals  by  England  and  the  United 
States  to  arrange  a  commercial  and  political  peace  with 
the  Russian  people  for  the  sake  of  the  world's  health 
and  reconstruction,  with  the  ulterior  motive  of  over- 
throwing the  Bolshevik  devil  by  letting  in  the  hght  to 
the  victims  of  its  bloody  rule. 

France  has  no  faith  in  a  League  of  Nations.  Cle- 
menceau  shrugged  his  shoulders  at  the  idea  of  it,  and 
yielded  to  President  Vv'ilson's  dream  for  the  sake  of 
practical  support  in  the  other  items  of  the  peace  treaty. 
The  French  people  will  not  admit  their  German  enemies 
to  any  society  of  nations  on  terms  of  equality,  and  do 
not  see  any  kind  of  guaranty  in  such  a  league  for  their 

20S 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

frontiers  and  their  national  safety.  The  present  rulers 
of  France,  men  of  ardent  patriotism,  not  looking  to  any- 
advance  in  the  ideas  of  civiUzation,  having  no  faith  in 
the  virtues  of  human  nature  to  resist  the  call  of  venge- 
ance and  of  greed,  take  the  old  cynical  view  of  the 
European  jungle,  and  rely  upon  the  old  philosophy  of 
alliances,  groups  united  in  self-interest,  buffer  states 
between  them  and  their  hereditary  foes,  which  made  up 
the  old  policy  of  the  balance  of  power. 

So  with  Belgium,  with  Poland,  with  the  aristocratic 
party  in  Hungary,  with  the  small  states  formed  out  of 
the  slaughter  of  the  Austrian  Empire,  France  has  es- 
tablished secret  understandings,  military  and  economic 
and  political,  which  will  safeguard  her,  she  hopes,  against 
the  menace  of  that  time  when  Germany  may  have 
recovered  enough  to  be  dangerous  again — ^though  by  all 
efforts  of  France  that  time  will  be  far  postponed.  It  is 
a  logical,  a  clear-cut,  in  many  ways  a  justified  policy. 
The  only  argument  against  it  is  that  it  harks  back  to 
the  state  of  national  rivalry,  suspicion,  diplomatic 
jugglings,  military  engagements  and  burdens,  v/hich 
cast  a  black  spell  over  Europe  before  the  late  war;  and 
that  it  is  a  preparation  for  a  renewed  conflict  at  some 
future  time,  when  this  new  balance  of  power  will  be 
tested  in  the  scales  of  fate,  and  Europe  again  will  be 
drenched  in  the  blood  of  warring  nations.  In  defense 
of  this  policy  the  French  people,  who  believed  that  the 
last  conflict  was  a  war  to  end  war,  that  the  killing  of 
German  militarism  was  to  be  the  relief  from  their  own 
burden  of  military  service,  will  have  to  maintain  a  great 
standing  army,  and — in  their  present  poverty — will  have 
to  find  somehow  money  enough  to  pay  for  it,  with  its 
desperate  struggle  to  keep  ahead  of  all  other  military 
powers  in  eflficiency  and  the  invention  of  the  machinery 
of  slaughter.  And  the  mothers  of  babes  just  born  will 
know,  as  they  rock  them  in  their  cradles,  that  they, 

206 


THE  PRICE  OF  VICTORY  IN  FRANCE 

like  their  fathers,  will  one  day  be  sent  forward  into  the 
fires  of  hell  to  be  torn  to  bits  by  flying  steel,  to  be  choked 
with  poison  gas,  to  be  blinded,  maimed,  maddened, 
or  killed.  Is  it  for  that  reason  that  just  now  there  are  net 
many  mothers  in  France^  not  many  babies  being  born? 


IX 

The  soul  of  France  is  not  happy  nor  at  peace.  Her 
agonies  are  too  fresh,  her  wounds  are  still  unhealed, 
and  the  price  of  victory  has  been  too  great.  Whether 
one  goes  to  the  chateau  of  the  landowner,  or  to  the 
cottage  of  the  peasant,  or  to  the  poor  rooms  of  city 
needlewomen  and  workers,  one  is  confronted  instantly, 
four  times  out  of  five,  with  the  ghost  of  some  dead 
boy  or  man  who  haunts  the  living. 

In  the  little  wooden  shanties  which  have  been  built 
up  on  the  old  battlefields  I  spoke,  as  I  have  told,  to 
French  people  who  have  come  back  again.  Several  of 
them  told  me  that  their  gladness  was  spoiled  by  the 
thought  of  the  sons  who  would  never  help  them  in  the 
fields  again,  or  come  tramping  into  the  kitchen,  or  work 
for  them  in  their  old  age. 

One  old  woman  said  to  me:  **When  peace  came  with 
its  excitement  which  made  us  a  little  mad  with  joy  I 
thought  my  son  would  come  back.  They  told  me  he 
was  killed,  but  I  believed  he  would  come  back.  Now  I 
know  he  will  not  come  back,  and  this  work  I  do  seems 
useless." 

Other  w^omen  spoke  like  that  in  some  such  words. 

The  men  who  have  come  back  into  these  villages  are 
not  altogether  merry.  Some  of  them  are  rather  sullen. 
There  are  quarrels  between  them  and  their  women 
folk.  For  five  years  they  were  away  from  home,  ex- 
cept for  brief  visits  on  leave,  if  they  were  lucky.  During 
their  absence  their  villages  were  the  billeting  places  of 

207 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

English,  Scottish,  Irish,  Canadian,  AustraHan  and 
American  soldiers.  There  were  flirtations,  love  aff'airs, 
inevitable  episodes  between  some  of  their  women  and 
these  foreign  soldiers.  Some  women's  tongues  are 
sharp,  some  of  them  have  long  memories  for  things  done 
by  their  sisters  in  time  of  war.  Gossip,  slander,  back- 
biting, happen  in  moments  of  malice.  .  .  .  The  young 
Frenchmen  with  sisters  and  sweethearts  are  not  very 
grateful  to  British  soldiers  and  others  for  what  they  did 
in  the  war.  They  are  jealous,  suspicious,  resentful  of 
the  friendship  they  established  with  the  women  of  France. 
It  is  an  aspect,  and  a  tragic  aspect,  of  war  psychology 
which  must  not  be  left  out  of  account  in  the  reaction 
which  has  injured  the  old  comradeship  between  the 
nations  who  fought  together. 

England  has  suffered  most  by  that  reaction.  France 
for  a  time  has  been  suspicious  of  England,  jealous  of 
her.  Conscious  that  they  lost  more  men  in  the  war, 
suffered  most  damage — frightful  and  irretrievable  dam- 
age to  beautiful  towns  and  churches  and  cathedrals 
and  countrysides — and  that  they  bore  the  cruelest 
shocks  of  war,  they  believe  that  England  gained  most 
from  the  peace.  They  point  to  the  widened  spheres 
of  the  British  imperial  rule,  in  Palestine  and  Mesopo- 
tamia, the  German  colonies  in  Africa,  and  they  think 
that  British  policy  now  is  inspired  by  mere  commercial 
selfishness,  and  that  our  power  stands  across  the  path 
of  French  interests  and  bars  the  way  of  France  to  those 
fruits  of  victory  still  unharvested  from  the  beaten 
enemy. 


In  May  of  192 1,  not  a  fortnight  after  the  German  ac- 
ceptance of  the  Bill  of  Costs,  there  arose  an  international 
crisis  which  put  a  more  severe  strain  upon  the  friendly 
relations  between  France  and  England.     It  had  been 

2q8 


THE  PRICE  OF  VICTORY  IN  FRANCE 

agreed  by  the  Supreme  Council  that  the  question  as  to 
the  separation  of  Upper  Silesia  with  its  rnixed  population 
of  Germans  and  Poles  should  be  put  to  a  plebiscite 
determining  whether  the  whole,  or  part  of  it,  should  re- 
main within  the  German  Reich  or  go  to  Poland.  The 
result  of  this  plebiscite,  superintended  by  an  Allied 
commission  under  the  protection  of  French  and  Italian 
troops,  and  a  body  of  British  officers,  was  by  six  to 
four  in  favor  of  Germany,  though  it  was  still  within 
the  right  of  the  Supreme  Council  to  decide  the  exact 
boundary  line  between  Germany  and  Poland.  With- 
out waiting  for  that  decision,  Korfanty,  a  Polish  leader, 
played  the  part  of  D'Annunzio  in  Fiume,  aroused  the 
fervor  of  the  Polish  masses,  and  incited  them  to  occupy 
German  districts.  The  French  stood  by  without  oppos- 
ing their  advance.  The  Italians  resisted,  and  lost  a 
number  of  men  before  they  retreated  under  overwhelm- 
ing numbers  of  Polish  insurgents.  British  officers  of 
the  Allied  mission,  there  to  uphold  international  jus- 
tice, in  fairness  to  Germany  as  to  Poland,  found  them- 
selves in  a  powerless  and  humiliating  position,  surrounded 
by  rebels  against  their  authority  whose  officers  they  were 
compelled  to  salute. 

When  this  news  reached  England,  Lloyd  George 
waited  a  little  while  and  then  gave  tongue.  He  spoke 
raspingly,  with  something  like  violence,  and  the  words 
had  an  ugly  sound  in  the  ears  of  France.  In  his  first 
statement  he  did  not  mention  France  by  more  than  a 
passing  reference,  but  inveighed  against  Poland,  the 
ally  and  foster-child  of  France,  with  very  bitter  words. 
The  hardest  thing  he  said  was  that  her  part  in  the  war 
had  been  divided  between  those  who  fought  by  the  side 
of  Russia  and  broke  when  Russia  broke,  and  those  who 
fought  to  the  end  on  the  side  of  Germany  against 
French  and  British  troops.  She  owed  her  nationality 
to  the  Allies,  and  it  was  her  duty  to  respect  the  Treaty 

209 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

of  Versailles  which  had  created  her  as  a  nation.  He 
made  it  plain  that  he  would  not  tolerate  this  invasion 
of  Silesia,  and  suggested  that  German  troops  might  be 
given  the  authority  to  repel  it. 

A  storm  of  protest  and  hostile  comment  arose  the 
next  morning  in  the  French  Press.  Lloyd  George  was 
warned  that  his  words  were  ''dangerous,"  that  France 
would  not  tolerate  such  insults  to  her  ally,  and  that 
they  revealed  something  like  a  pro-German  spirit. 
Aristide  Briand,  the  Prime  Minister,  accepted  the  fact 
that  the  Treaty  of  Versailles  must  be  respected  in 
Silesia  as  elsewhere,  but  warned  Germany  that  any 
military  adventure  against  the  PoUsh  insurgents  would 
be  regarded  as  an  act  of  war  by  France.  A  few  days 
passed,  and  it  seemed  as  though  the  French  Press  had 
received  orders  to  pour  oil  on  the  troubled  waters. 
They  made  certain  half-hearted  apologies  for  the  heat 
of  their  language  and  said  that  Mr.  Lloyd  George's 
statement  had  been  inaccurately  reported.  There  had 
been  a  "misunderstanding."  But  Lloyd  George  was 
resolved  that  there  should  be  no  misunderstanding  of 
his  views.  On  the  evening  of  May  17th  he  issued  another 
statement,  more  vigorous  than  the  first,  more  provoc- 
ative of  French  sentiment,  not  unjustified  but  challeng- 
ing. To  their  Press  he  addressed  severe  and  warning 
words:  "In  all  respect,  I  would  say  to  the  French  Press 
that  their  habit  of  treating  every  expression  of  Allied 
opinion  which  does  not  coincide  with  their  own  as  im- 
pertinence, is  fraught  with  mischief.  That  attitude 
of  mind,  if  persisted  in,  will  be  fatal  to  any  entente." 
In  addition  he  used  certain  words  which  seemed  to  have 
a  sinister  meaning,  suggestive  of  a  new  grouping  of 
Powers  in  which  France  might  be  isolated  from  the 
friendship  of  Great  Britain. 

"The  course  of  the  world  in  coming  years  cannot  be 
forecast.     The    mists    ahead    are    more   than    usually 

210 


THE  PRICE  OF  VICTORY  IN  FRANCE 

dense.  Much  will  depend  on  the  Allies  holding  together. 
Apart  from  the  treaty  obligations,  events  which  can- 
not be  foreseen  must  determine  the  future  groupings 
of  nations  y  and  the  future  of  the  worlds  especially  of  Europe  y 
will  he  determined  by  old  or  new  friendships. " 

That  last  sentence,  if  it  had  any  meaning,  and  it  was 
not  uttered  lightly,  could  have  only  one  meaning,  and 
that  the  warning  that  the  Anglo-French  entente  might 
be  broken  in  favor  of  an  Anglo-German  entente.  As 
such  it  was  taken  by  the  French  people,  and  it  came  to 
them  as  a  blow  in  the  face.  In  every  newspaper  in 
France  this  statement  by  the  Prime  Minister  of  England, 
following  his  first  speech  about  Silesia,  was  regarded 
as  an  unfriendly,  offensive,  and  brutal  utterance,  which 
they  refused  to  accept  as  representative  of  the  views  of 
the  English  people. 

They  were  right  in  refusing  to  accept  that.  In  spite 
of  the  annoyance  of  many  of  our  people  at  the  long 
series  of  rather  bitter  articles  appearing  in  French 
newspapers,  the  thought  that  our  friendship  with  France 
should  actually  be  endangered — broken — came  as  a 
sharp  shock.  The  thought  was  abominable,  for  if 
that  were  to  happen,  if  in  the  future  groupings  of  nations 
we  should  find  ourselves  allied  to  the  enemies  of  France 
and  not  with  them,  then  indeed  the  whole  of  the  Great 
War  had  been  but  a  grisly  massacre  without  any  spiritual 
purpose  at  all,  and  the  six  hundred  thousand  British 
dead  in  the  fields  of  France  had  been  slain  for  the  devil's 
jest  in  a  game  of  mockery. 

We  must  have  differences  with  France.  Our  general 
attitude  toward  the  foundations  of  peace  in  Europe 
was  not  the  same  as  hers,  because  her  peril  was  greater, 
her  sense  of  unforgivable  injury  more  poignant,  her 
future  more  uncertain,  her  desire  to  keep  Germany 
weak  and  poor  a  desperate  and  all-consuming  passion, 
because  of  hideous   memories   and   ever-present   fears. 

211 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

But  though  we  might  afford  to  be  more  generous  to  a 
beaten  enemy,  and  look  forw2trd  to  a  peace  based  upon 
concihation  rather  than  upon  the  mihtary  supremacy 
of  a  new  balance  of  powder,  there  could  be  no  honest 
question  of  abandoning  France  for  any  new  allegiance. 
It  would  be  the  deepest,  blackest  dishonor,  the  viola- 
tion of  all  the  tragic  sacrifice  and  the  most  heroic  memo- 
ries of  that  war  which  we  have  fought  together.  I 
remember  at  the  beginning  of  the  war  the  shouts  of 
*'Vive  les  Anglais!"  when  the  first  of  our  boys  came 
marching  through  French  villages;  the  tears  of  the  men 
and  women  w^io  thrust  fruit  and  flowers  into  their 
hands;  the  cry  of  "Camarades!"  ...  I  remember  our 
troops  in  the  villages  behind  the  lines  year  after  year, 
where  every  Tommy  had  friends  who  kissed  him  when 
he  went  off  to  battle  and  cried  when  news  came  of  his 
death.  ...  I  remember  the  entry  into  Lille,  toward 
the  end  of  it  all,  when  the  liberated  people  hailed  us  and 
wept  with  joy  at  the  sight  of  us.  Was  all  that  to  be 
wiped  out,  forgotten,  and  disgraced  by  the  quarrels  of 
politicians  and  a  drifting  apart.?  Never;  for  while  there 
are  men  alive  in  England  who  fought  in  France,  they 
will  remember  the  heroic  spirit  of  those  people,  their 
long,  patient  suffering,  their  gayety  even  in  the  ditches 
of  tragedy,  their  valor  of  soul.  And  in  France  they 
remember  our  men,  the  "Tommies"  they  admired,  the 
graves  they  tend  still  with  flowers  kept  fresh. 

To  me,  now  and  always,  though  I  see  the  hope  of  the 
future  with  a  vision  impossible  to  many  Frenchmen,  the 
name  of  France  is  like  an  old  song,  and  I  love  her  people, 
her  history,  her  beauty,  with  something  like  passion. 
I  am  not  alone  in  that,  and  there  are  between  France 
and  England  sacred  ties  which  can  only  be  broken  if 
honor  is  broken,  and  faith  is  defiled,  and  a  spiritual 
union  in  desperate  sacrifice  utterly  forgotten. 


VI 

THE    SOCIAL   REVOLUTION    IN    ENGLISH    LIFE 


TN  many  subtle  ways,  not  apparent  on  the  surface 
*■  of  things,  the  social  spirit  of  England  has  been  more 
changed  in  the  last  six  years  of  history  than  in  the  six 
centuries  preceding  them.  Such  a  statement  may 
seem  fantastic  in  exaggeration  for  the  sake  of  an  easy 
and  arresting  phrase,  yet  it  is  exactly  true  of  certain 
characteristics  of  English  life  and  habit,  for  the  war 
was  a  convulsion  which  shook  England  to  the  core  and 
broke  up  many  of  its  old  instincts  and  traditions  of 
social  faith. 

In  spite  of  the  modern  developments  of  democ- 
racy and  industry,  the  progress  of  education,  and 
the  growth  of  cities,  England  remained,  until  the 
World  War,  amazingly  feudal  in  its  structure  and 
insular  in  its  habits  of  thought.  The  old  landed 
aristocracy  maintained  in  the  countryside  the  power 
and  allegiance  which  they  had  possessed  for  hundreds 
of  years,  and  the  small  farmers  and  tenantry,  fast 
rooted  to  their  soil,  had  no  sense  of  change  and  no  desire 
for  change. 

In  counties  like  Somerset  and  Devon,  Warwick  and 
Gloucester,  Norfolk  and  Suffolk,  the  peasant  laborer 
was,  in  his  ways  of  speech  and  thought,  but  little  differ- 
ent from  his  forefathers  of  Tudor  and  Plantagenet 
times,  spoke  almost  the  language  of  Chaucer,  so  that 
to   the   London   man,    modernized,    quick  witted,  the 

213 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

"yokel'*  of  the  south,  west,  and  north  was  incompre- 
hensible in  his  dialect  and  primitive  in  his  outlook 
and  understanding.  The  landed  gentry,  in  old  country 
mansions,  changed  the  cut  of  their  clothes,  danced  the 
fox-trot,  adopted  the  latest  social  fashion,  but  instinc- 
tively, in  the  very  fiber  of  their  bodies,  in  allegiance  to 
a  tradition  of  life  and  to  a  certain  plot  of  land  which 
was  theirs,  were  intensely  insular. 

I  remember  a  3^ear  or  two  before  the  war  a  startling 
instance  of  the  conservatism  of  English  life  beyond  the 
cities.  It  was  when  the  craze  for  "pageants"  had 
caught  hold  of  English  imagination,  so  that  in  many 
old  towns  the  people  dressed  themselves  in  the  costumes 
of  the  past,  reread  the  history  of  their  forefathers,  and 
acted  the  drama  of  the  centuries  from  Saxon  times  to 
their  own  present.  In  Norfolk  there  was  such  a  pag- 
eant, and  one  scene  of  it  was  to  represent  a  chapter 
of  history  when,  five  hundred  years  ago,  the  gentlemen 
of  Norfolk,  with  their  squires,  came  to  pay  homage  to 
Mary  Tudor,  their  princess.  Five  centuries  had  passed, 
but  every  actor  in  the  scene  bore  the  same  name,  lived 
on  the  same  soil,  held  the  same  place,  as  those  ancestors 
of  his  who  had  knelt  before  the  Tudor  princess. 

In  a  thousand  ways  like  this  England  held  to  the 
past.  The  people  were  insular,  and  the  sea  which  divided 
them  from  the  Continent  was  a  great  water  of  defense 
against  the  spirit  of  change,  except  in  outward,  super- 
ficial things. 

Then  the  war  came  and  changed  much  in  the  spirit 
of  English  people.  ...  At  first  it  seemed  as  though 
it  would  be  like  other  wars  of  England — a  foreign 
expedition  of  a  little  professional  army,  and  of  young 
lads  eager  to  see  "foreign  parts"  by  taking  the  king's 
shilling.  They  would  fight  gallantly,  many  would  be 
killed,  there  would  be  exciting  reading  in  the  news- 
prints, and  then  the  bells  would  ring  for  victory,  the 

214 


THE  SOCIAL  REVOLUTION  IN  ENGLISH  LIFE 

lads  would  come  marching  back,  and  English  life  would 
go  on  again,  hardly  touched  or  altered.  Even  at  Water- 
loo there  had  been  only  twenty-five  thousand  English 
soldiers.  To  the  mass  of  English  folk  the  Napoleonic 
wars  had  been  a  remote  and  distant  thing,  not  affect- 
ing their  own  lives  much.  When  the  great  World  War 
broke  out  the  British  troops  who  were  sent,  according 
to  the  pledge  with  France,  were  called  the  "Expedi- 
tionary Force,"  as  in  the  old  days.  But  presently  the 
Regular  Army  was  spent,  and  presently  all  the  youth 
of  the  nation  was  sent  out,  the  younger  brothers  follow- 
ing the  elder  brothers,  the  married  following  the  single 
men,  fathers  of  families  conscripted  like  the  boys  at 
school.  England  was  all  in — all  her  men,  all  her  women, 
and  no  escape  for  any  of  them  in  the  service  of  death. 
No  living  body  in  England  was  exempt  from  the  menace 
of  destruction.  Death  came  out  of  the  skies  and 
chose  old  men  and  women,  nursing  mothers,  babies, 
anyone.  The  enemy  attacked  them  in  little  homes  in 
back  streets,  in  big  factory  centers,  in  the  heart  of 
London.  ...  So  England  was  no  longer  safe  in  her 
island.  An  island  people,  uninvaded  for  a  thousand 
years,  with  utter  reliance  on  her  fleet  as  an  invincible 
shield,  were  suddenly  shocked  into  the  knowledge  that 
the  sea  about  them  was  no  longer  an  impassable  gult 
between  them  and  all  foreign  foes.  It  was  a  shock 
which  broke  up  the  old  psychology.  We  have  not 
recovered  from  it  yet,  nor  ever  shall  do. 

English  youths  went  out  to  the  death  fields,  hundred 
thousand  after  hundred  thousand,  until  four  million 
men  had  gone  that  way.  From  first  to  last  on  all  fronts, 
the  men  of  the  English  counties — not  Irish  nor  Scots, 
nor  Welsh  nor  Canadian  nor  Australian — made  up 
sixty-four  per  cent  of  the  British  fighting  forces.  They 
were  English  soldiers  who  fought  most,  and  endured 
most,  and  died  most,  because  there  were  most  of  them, 

215 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

though  the  world  heard  least  of  them,  because  the 
Enghsh  people  don't  talk  most  about  themselves.  Out 
of  every  four  men  who  went  out  to  the  World  War  one 
did  not  come  back  again,  and  of  those  who  came  back 
many  are  maimed  and  blind  and  some  are  mad.  England 
and  the  spirit  and  mind  of  England  were  altered  by  so 
great  an  ordeal  which  had  come  to  every  home  and 
heart. 


II 

In  many  ways  the  alteration  was  plainly  visible 
during  the  war,  especially  to  fighting  men  who  came 
home  from  the  dirty  ditches  on  three  days'  leave,  or 
seven.  The  home-staying  people — the  old  and  middle- 
aged,  the  workers  in  the  factories  providing  the  material 
and  munitions  of  war,  the  government  officials,  clerks, 
and  employers  of  labor,  even  the  young  girls — were 
possessed  by  a  new  energy,  a  more  vital  spirit,  a  restless 
and  energetic  excitement.  They  were  all  "out  to  win." 
They  were  all,  in  big  ways  or  little,  dynamic  in  their 
activities.  Caste  was  for  a  time  in  abeyance,  though 
not  abolished.  (That  in  England,  where  we  are  all 
snobs,  from  the  plumber's  mate  and  the  greengrocer's 
wife  to  the  Eton  boy  and  the  dowager  duchess,  would 
be  expecting  too  much,  too  quickly.)  University  pro- 
fessors were  acting  as  field  laborers.  Patrician  women 
were  making  munitions  with  factory  girls.  A  great, 
strong,  spiritual  wind  seemed  to  have  swept  through  all 
classes  of  English  life.  It  had  cleansed  even  the  slums 
of  great  English  cities  which  had  seemed  past  cleansing. 

Before  the  war,  an  immense  population  in  England 
crowded  into  the  cities,  had  lived  below  the  poverty 
line  or  on  the  thin  edge  of  it — miserably,  precariously, 
dirtily.  There  was  a  mass  of  floating,  casual  labor, 
often  out  of  work,  huddled  in  the  hovels  of  back  streets, 

2x6 


THE  SOCIAL  REVOLUTION  IN  ENGLISH  LIFE 

in  filthy  conditions.  Their  children  were  ragged, 
barefooted,  underfed.  Now  those  conditions  had  been 
altered  by  the  war.  The  demand  for  labor  was  so 
great  that  every  able-bodied  man  could  get  a  good 
wage.  The  government  and  the  employers  paid  great 
wages  for  skilled  work.  Mechanics  who  had  found 
trouble  in  getting  forty  or  fifty  shillings  a  week  now 
gained  two  hundred  or  three  hundred  shillings  a  week. 
Any  girl  with  her  hair  hanging  down  her  back  or  tied 
into  a  pigtail  could  get  a  wage  that  her  father  would 
have  envied  before  the  war.  Munition  girls  were  getting 
three  or  four  pounds  a  week,  some  of  them  far  more  than 
that.  Small  families,  all  working,  paid  by  government 
money,  raked  in  an  incredible  weekly  revenue.  For 
the  first  time  they  had  a  broad  margin  of  money  for 
the  fun  of  life  as  well  as  for  its  sharp  necessities. 

I  remember  being  home  on  leave  once  during  the  war 
and  walking  in  the  park  of  a  poor  district  of  London  on 
a  bank  holiday — when  the  poor  people  used  to  come  out 
of  their  slums  in  their  rags  to  enjoy  a  little  liberty. 
This  time  there  were  no  rags,  but  well-dressed  children, 
girls  overdressed  in  the  imitation  of  fashionable  ladies, 
a  strange  new  look  of  prosperity  and  well-being.  At 
that  time  the  workers  in  factory  towns  had  more  money 
than  they  knew  how  to  use,  and  bought  absurd  little 
luxuries,  and  grabbed  at  the  amusements  of  life  without 
thought  of  the  morrow.  There  were  pianos  in  the  homes 
of  coal  heavers,  and  the  wives  of  laborers  wore  fur 
coats — in  summer  as  well  as  in  winter. 

The  fighting  man,  back  from  the  trenches,  where 
he  risked  death  every  day  and  every  minute  of  every 
day  for  one  shilling  and  twopence,  was  startled  by  the 
money  made  by  the  luckier  men  who  worked  for  war 
at  home.  He  saw  injustice  there,  inequality  of  service 
and  reward,  and  sometimes  was  bitter  and  blasphemous 
on  the  subject.  But  on  the  whole,  the  soldier  did  not 
15  217 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

begrudge  the  money  earned  by  the  home  workers.  They 
were  his  folks.  He  was  glad  of  their  luck,  though  he 
did  not  share  it.  He  believed  that  when  he  came  home — 
ij  he  came  home! — he,  too,  would  get  high  wages  for 
any  job  he  might  get.  His  wrath  and  the  wrath  of 
the  home  workers  (in  spite  of  their  own  prosperity) 
were  reserved  for  the  manufacturers  and  financiers  who 
were  making  enormous  profits  out  of  government  con- 
tracts— vast  profits  out  of  the  massacre. 

"The  profiteers,"  as  they  were  called,  sometimes 
fairly  and  sometimes  unfairly,  became  the  worst  hated 
class  in  England  as  in  other  countries,  by  the  masses  of 
working  people,  and  by  the  old  gentry  who  gave  their 
youth  to  war,  according  to  old  traditions  and  the  law 
of  their  caste,  without  any  reward  but  that  of  pride 
and  honor.  The  old  aristocracy  saw  themselves 
doomed  by  the  uprising  of  the  New  Rich.  The  small 
landowner,  the  country  squire,  the  nobleman  of  the  old 
order,  aloof  from  trade  and  manufactures,  gave  their 
wealth  to  the  service  of  the  state,  as  they  gave  their 
sons,  and  upon  them  fell,  year  by  year,  a  heavier  bur- 
den of  taxation.  Before  the  end  of  the  war,  and  after 
the  end  of  it,  many  of  them  sold  their  estates,  which 
had  been  in  their  families  for  hundreds  of  years,  sold 
also  their  family  treasures.  The  New  Rich  took  pos- 
session of  many  old  mansions,  bought  the  family  heir- 
looms of  the  old  regime,  renovated  and  vulgarized  old 
historic  places.  I  know  one  family  of  the  ancient  order 
whose  history  in  the  war  is  typical  of  others.  There 
were  four  sons,  and  all  of  them  were  in  the  army  or  the 
navy,  and  two  of  them  were  killed.  The  daughters 
became  nurses  and  devoted  themselves  to  the  wounded 
during  all  the  years  of  war.  The  mother  died  by  the 
strain  of  war.  Increasing  taxation  bore  down  heavily 
upon  an  already  impoverished  estate.  The  father,  a 
peer  whose  name  belongs  to  the  great  memories  of  Eng- 

218 


THE  SOCIAL  REVOLUTION  IN  ENGLISH  LIFE 

land,  sold  the  pictures  of  his  ancestors  to  an  American 
millionaire,  then  the  treasures  and  relics  of  his  house. 
It  is  now  an  empty  shell,  and  the  eldest  son,  back  from 
the  war,  farms  a  little  plot  of  land  on  the  edge  of  the 
old  park  which  belonged  to  the  family  since  the  first 
Charles  was  king. 

Ill 

A  social  revolution  has  been  accomplished  in  England 
by  this  turn  in  the  wheel  of  fortune.  The  New  Poor — 
once  the  old  gentry — are  scraping  along  fairly  well,  as 
they  must  confess,  on  the  remnants  of  former  wealth; 
the  New  Rich  possess  many  of  their  places,  and  so  far 
have  not  learned  those  traditions  of  kindness,  of  gener- 
osity, and  of  noble  manners  which  made  the  old  gentry 
pleasant  people,  whatever  faults  they  had.  In  a  way 
previously  unknown  to  a  great  extent  in  England, 
small  traders,  little  manufacturers,  business  adven- 
turers, without  capital  or  power,  seized  the  chance  of 
war,  the  needs  of  a  government  reckless  of  all  cost 
provided  the  supplies  of  war  came  in,  and  made  rapid 
progress  to  great  prosperity.  Their  profits  mounted 
higher  and  higher,  and,  though  the  government  imposed 
upon  them  an  excess-profits  duty,  most  of  them  dodged 
it,  in  one  way  or  another. 

From  this  class  there  has  risen  up  a  new  "smart  set" 
whose  appearance  and  ways  are  surprising  to  those  who 
knew  England  before  the  war  and  came  back  with 
observant  eyes.  They  have  invaded  the  places  which 
used  to  be  sanctuaries  of  the  old  aristocracy — Prince's 
restaurant,  the  Hyde  Park  Hotel,  the  royal  inclosure 
at  Ascot,  the  lawns  of  Ranelagh  and  Hurlingham,  the 
river  gardens  of  Henley.  They  dress  loudly  and  talk 
loudly,  in  a  nasal  way.  The  young  men  are  singularly 
lacking  in  good  manners.  They  sprawl  in  the  presence 
of  their  women  folk.     Their  idea  of  gallantry  is  horse- 

219 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

play  with  pretty  girls.  They  pufF  cigarette  smoke 
into  the  faces  of  their  dancing  partners,  and  play  the 
giddy  goat  in  public  places.  It  is  they  who  crowd  into 
public  dancing  rooms  with  girls  expensively  dressed  but 
not  expensively  educated.  Hour  after  hour  they  gyrate 
with  the  grotesque  movements  of  the  modern  dance, 
cheek  to  cheek  with  their  little  ladies,  yet  singularly 
indifferent,  it  seems,  to  amorous  dalliance.  It  is  a  ritual 
which  they  perform  earnestly  as  part  of  their  new  duties 
in  life,  but  as  far  as  I  have  observed  them,  they  do  not 
get  any  real  pleasure  out  of  the  exercise  or  out  of  the 
company  of  the  girls.  They  pass  from  one  partner  to 
another  as  they  would  change  omnibuses  on  the  way 
to  the  City.  The  girls  themselves,  in  this  particular 
set,  are  a  curious  compound  of  feminine  artificiality 
and  tomboy  simplicity.  They  paint  their  lips,  wear 
hideous  little  frocks  and  openwork  stockings,  but  they 
will  drive  a  motor  car  through  the  thickest  traffic 
without  turning  a  hair,  and  box  a  boy's  ears  if  his 
"cheek"  gets  too  much  on  their  nerves.  They  are 
self-possessed,  bad-mannered,  vulgar  young  people,  su- 
premely indifferent  to  public  opinion,  pleased  to  shock 
the  sensibilities  of  old-fashioned  folk,  yet  not  outrage- 
ous in  the  larger  moralities.  Generally,  I  think,  they 
are  able  to  look  after  themselves  with  perfect  propriety, 
though  they  take  risks  which  would  horrify  the  ghosts 
of  their  grandmothers,  and  behave  with  a  loose  frivolity 
which  would  arouse  the  suspicions  of  the  most  charita- 
ble. Those  young  people  are  the  children  of  those  who 
did  well  out  of  the  war.  They  have  not  yet  acquired 
the  refinements  of  wealth,  though  they  have  lost  the 
simplicity  of  the  class  to  which  their  parents  belonged. 
Their  faces,  their  voices,  their  manners  betray  a  lowly 
origin,  for  heredity  still  has  something  to  say,  and  they 
have  not  found  a  real  place  in  English  life,  though  they 
make  so  much  noise  and  take  up  so  much  room. 

220 


THE  SOCIAL  REVOLUTION  IN  ENGLISH  LIFE 

It  was  the  middle-class  man  or  woman  that  was  hard- 
est hit  by  taxation  before  the  ending  of  the  war,  and  by 
the  prices  of  life's  necessities  rising  higher  and  higher 
every    month.      The     laboring    classes     kept     mostly 
beyond  the  pace  of  these  rising  prices  by  rising  wages. 
Well  organized  and  fully  aware  of  their  new  importance 
as  the  workers  for  victory,  they  saw  to  it  that  their 
wages  should  always  be  on  the   upgrade   and   beyond 
the  tide  of  living  costs.     If  this  did  not  happen,  they 
went   on   strike,    and   the   government   yielded — every 
time.     The  government   paid  every  kind  of  wage  for 
work,  though  secretly  it  knew  that  there  would  be  a 
fearful  reckoning  when  victory  was  assured,  if  it  might 
be  assured,  v/hich  was  not  always  certain.     But  there 
were  many  people  between  the  devil  and  the  deep  sea 
— between  profiteers  and  organized  labor.     They  were 
unorganized.     They  were  living  on  the  interest  of  small 
capital.     They    were    dependent    on    fixed    salaries    or 
professional  fees  which  could  not  be  increased.     Their 
rents   were    raised.     The   income-tax   assessor   had    no 
mercy  on  them.     The  cost  of  living  frightened  them. 
They  v/ere  reduced  to  a  state  of  stinting  and  scraping, 
underfeeding,  clinging  to  shabby  clothes.     They,  more 
than   any,   belonged  to  the  New   Poor.  .  .  .  Then   at 
last  the  war  ended,  and  masses  of  men  came  back  from 
the  battlefields,  leaving  an  Army  of  Ghosts  behind  them 
— their  dead  comrades.     Then  all  things  changed  under 
the  surface  of  English  life. 


IV 

The  men  who  came  back  were  not  the  same  men  as 
those  who  had  gone  away.  They  had  been  utterly 
changed.  They  had  gone  out  from  villages  in  England 
where  their  life  had  been  very  narrow,  very  limited  in 
ideas  and  speech.     Many  of  the  boys  in  those  villages 

221 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

were  as  simple  and  unthinking  as  the  peasants  of  the 
Middle  Ages.  From  the  city  slums  they  had  gone 
out  in  the  big  battalions,  and  the  under-sized,  under- 
fed, ill-aired  lads  of  that  city  had  been  broadened  and 
strengthened,  well  fed,  well  aired  in  an  outdoor  life 
that  was  healthy  and  fine  when  it  was  not  deadly  and 
dreadful.  They  had  taken  frightful  risks  as  a  daily 
habit,  until  the  thought  of  death  was  not  much  to  them. 
They  had  mixed  and  talked  with  men  of  many  minds. 
They  had  thought  strange  thoughts  in  the  silence  of 
night  watches  with  the  instant  menace  of  death  about 
them.  Some  of  them  were  broken  in  nerve.  Some  of 
them  were  brutalized  and  demoralized  by  this  life  of 
war.  Many  of  them  were  bitter  and  resentful  of  the 
things  they  had  had  to  do  and  suffer  and  see.  All  of 
them  hated  war.  Most  of  them  had  come  to  think 
that  not  only  the  Germans  were  guilty  of  that  war, 
though  most  guilty,  but  that  something  was  wrong  with 
civilization  itself,  with  the  governments  of  nations, 
with  the  old  men  who  had  sent  the  young  men  to  the 
trenches  because  this  massacre  had  been  arranged 
or  allowed. 

They  were  eager  to  get  back  home,  and  thousands 
were  kept  rotting  in  mind  and  body  in  many  far  places 
— as  far  as  Mesopotamia — months  after  peace.  When 
they  came  home  they  were  not  eager  at  first  to  get  to 
work.  They  had  earned,  they  thought,  a  hoHday,  a 
long  rest.  They  had  served  England.  England  could 
keep  them  for  a  bit.  So  for  many  months  they  idled, 
played  around,  restlessly,  never  quite  satisfied,  not 
fitting  easily  again  into  civil  Hfe  and  home  life — and 
the  government  still  kept  them  on  unemployed  doles, 
piling  up  the  national  debt,  printing  more  paper  money, 
which  was  nothing  but  a  promissory  note  on  future 
industry.  Prices  did  not  fall;  they  rose  higher.  The 
profiteers,    big   and   small,   capitalist    and    shopkeeper, 

222 


THE  SOCIAL  REVOLUTION  IN  ENGLISH  LIFE 

still  demanded  the  same  margin  of  profit  on  goods  made 
and  sold.  The  ex-soldier  v/as  exasperated  by  these 
prices.  His  government  dole  was  not  large  enough  to 
give  him  much  of  a  margin  for  the  fun  of  life.  Presently 
he  began  to  demand  work.  The  mass  of  skilled  hands 
found  it  easily  enough,  on  the  whole,  and  at  war  wages. 
But  there  was  a  great  mass  of  unskilled  labor  which 
could  not  get  work.  It  was  very  skilled  labor  in  the 
art  and  craft  of  war.  It  was  made  up  of  expert  machine 
gunners,  experienced  airmen,  riflemen,  bombers,  trench- 
mortar  experts,  fellows  who  could  use  a  bayonet  dex- 
terously. But  it  was  utterly  unskilled  in  the  arts  and 
crafts  of  peace.  These  men  had  been  boys  when  they 
were  recruits.  They  had  gone  out  to  war  straight  from 
school.  They  had  skipped  apprenticeship  to  any  trade. 
They  had  not  even  learned  typewriting  or  clerical  work. 
When  they  asked  for  jobs  the  trade-unions  said: 

"Where  is  your  apprenticeship  ticket?" 

"I  was  in  the  army,"  said  the  unemployed  man. 
''*I  was  fighting  for  England  and  the  whole  damn  crowd 
of  stay-at-homes." 

"Sorry,"  said  the  trade-union  foreman.  "You  were 
little  heroes,  no  doubt,  and  we're  much  obliged  to  you, 
but  we  don't  dilute  skilled  labor  with  unskilled  trash. 
It's  against  trade-union  rules." 

It  was  also,  it  seemed,  against  the  principles  of  many 
employers  of  labor  in  the  great  cities,  the  managers 
of  city  offices.  Young  gentlemen  who  had  been  officers 
in  the  infantry  or  the  aircraft,  in  the  tanks  or  machine- 
gun  corps,  called  upon  them  in  search  of  clerkships. 
These  were  the  loyal  gentlemen  who,  while  the  young 
men  were  fighting  and  dying,  said,  "We  will  fight  to 
the  last  man — to  the  bitter  end."  But  now  that  the 
end  had  come,  with  victory,  some  of  them  looked 
doubtfully  at  the  ex-officer  boys  who  had  had  the  luck 
to  come  back,  and  uttered  disconcerting  words. 

221 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

"You  are  hardly  fitted  for  work  in  this  oifice.  You 
have  been  wasting  your  time  in  the  army.  Probably 
you  have  acquired  habits  which  would  not  make  you 
useful  in  this  business.  On  the  whole,  we  prefer  boys 
just  out  of  school  or  just  down  from  the  university." 

So  young  ex-officers  after  various  experiences  of  this 
kind  went  away  using  language  they  had  learned  in 
Flanders — strong,  unprintable  language — with  great 
bitterness  in  their  hearts. 

On  Christmas  Eve  last  in  London,  while  the  streets 
were  filled  with  people  doing  their  shopping,  some  of 
these  ex-officers — heroes  of  the  war — stood  on  the 
sidewalks,  turning  the  handles  of  piano-organs,  appeal- 
ing to  the  charity  of  passers-by.  Probably  they  were 
the  worst  and  not  the  best  of  the  unemployed  officers, 
the  scallywags,  but  it  was  not  good  to  see  them.  The 
sight  of  them  there  sickened  some  of  us  who  had  been 
with  them  in  the  war.  I  know  a  lieutenant  colonel 
who  was  reduced  to  hawking  about  a  book  from  house 
to  house.  By  an  irony  of  fate  it  was  a  History  of  the 
Great  War,  in  which  he  had  played  an  honorable  part. 
On  the  sales  of  the  book  he  was  to  get  a  small  commission, 
but  at  the  end  of  his  first  week's  work,  when  he  had 
agonized  with  shyness  and  shame,  afraid  to  ask  for  the 
"lady  of  the  house"  lest  she  should  be  one  with  whom 
he  had  taken  tea  in  better  days,  he  was  fourpence  down 
on  his  expenses.  There  are  many  men  like  that — some 
are  friends  of  mine — who  have  never  been  able  to  get  a 
decent  job  since  the  armistice.  Civil  life  had  no  place 
for  them,  in  spite  of  Lord  Haig's  constant  appeals 
to  the  nation  on  their  behalf.  The  men  had  a  better 
chance  than  their  officers,  and  until  recent  days  the 
majority  did  get  assimilated  into  the  ranks  of  labor, 
although  a  minority  remained  unemployed,  and,  in 
some  cases,  owing  to  nervous  debility  after  the  shock 
of  war,  unemployable. 

224 


THE  SOCIAL  REVOLUTION  IN  ENGLISH  LIFE 

The  government  was  not  unmindful  of  these  men. 
Every  unemployed  soldier  received,  and  still  receives, 
a  weekly  allowance,  now  reduced  to  one  pound,  and  this 
helps  a  single  man  to  scrape  along  without  starvation, 
but  no  more  than  that,  and  without  any  sense  of  good 
reward.  The  man  who  doesn't  like  work  makes  it  do. 
The  man  who  wants  to  work  and  can't  receives  this 
dole  without  gratitude — with  a  curse  in  his  heart  at  a 
nation's  ingratitude. 

Among  his  rivals,  keeping  him  out  of  work,  were  the 
girls  of  England.  During  the  years  when  manhood 
was  away  in  masses  the  girls  came  out  of  their  homes, 
took  the  places  of  men  in  many  kinds  of  work — rough 
work  as  well  as  soft  work — and  did  wonderfully  well. 
They  were  happy  in  that  work,  earning  good  wages 
which  enabled  them  to  buy  pretty  frocks,  to  amuse 
themselves  in  holiday  hours,  to  be  magnificently  inde- 
pendent of  the  stuffy  little  homes  in  which  they  had 
been  like  caged  birds.  English  girlhood  found  its 
wmgs  in  the  war,  and  flew  away  from  the  old  traditions 
of  inclosure  to  a  larger  liberty. 

That  has  been  an  immense  social  change.  Apart 
from  the  peculiarities  of  the  New  Rich  which  I  have 
mentioned,  it  has  changed  the  manners  and  spirit  of 
English  life,  and  these  clear-eyed  girls  of  war-time 
England,  now  grown  to  womanhood,  have  nothing  in 
common  w4th  the  prim  and  timid  ways  of  their  mammas 
and  grandmammas,  but  face  life  without  shyness  of 
fear — confident,  frank,  adventurous,  out  for  fun  at  any 
price — ^which  is  sometimes  too  high  and  horrible. 

Since  the  war  a  new  generation  of  youth — boys  as 
v/ell  as  girls — has  grown  up.  The  younger  brothers 
are  filling  the  places  of  the  elder  brothers  who  were  in 
the  fighting  fields  and  did  not  come  back.  It  is  a  new 
kind  of  youth  in  England,  belonging  to  a  new  life  strange 
to  VIS  older  men.     It  is  not  touched  by  the  shadow  of 

22§ 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

war.  It  has  got  clear  away  from  that.  It  refuses  to 
be  gloomy  with  present  conditions;  it  is  impatient  of 
the  tragedy  that  hangs  over  older  minds.  It  is  very 
daring  in  its  desire  to  cut  clean  away  from  old  traditions 
of  thought  and  manner.  It  is  joyous,  reckless,  amazingly 
thoughtless  of  trouble  ahead.  It  joins  the  dance  of 
life,  eager  to  crowd  a  lot  into  the  passing  hour.  The 
lessons  and  the  memories  of  war  do  not  seem  to  sober 
it  or  touch  it  with  any  gravity. 


It  seems  to  superficial  observers,  even  sometimes  to 
men  hke  myself,  whose  job  it  is  to  observe  below  the 
surface,  that  the  English  people  have  forgotten  too 
quickly  the  things  that  happened — the  men  who  died, 
the  men  who  live  in  blindness,  in  madness,  in  hospitals 
for  cripples  and  shell-shock  cases.  Many  times  I  have 
been  saddened  by  this  thought  of  quick  forgetfulness 
and  have  been  startled  by  the  apparent  callousness  of 
my  own  country  after  the  blood  sacrifice  of  its  youth. 

England  is  not  callous.  A  great  proof  of  piety  and 
remembrance  and  pride  was  given  on  the  last  anniver- 
sary of  armistice,  when  the  body  of  an  unknown  soldier 
was  brought  down  Whitehall,  past  the  Cenotaph,  on 
the  way  to  a  grave  in  the  Abbey.  The  King  and  his 
generals  waited  there  to  salute  this  body  of  a  man 
whom  no  one  knew  except  as  one  of  those  who  had  fallen 
in  the  defense  of  England,  whom  no  one  knew,  yet 
was  known  in  the  hearts  of  all  of  us.  In  the  night 
women  came  out  into  the  streets  of  London  to  wait  for 
the  dawn,  to  be  ready  for  the  man  who  was  their  man 
— husband  or  lover  or  brother  or  son.  Not  thousands  of 
women,  but  hundreds  of  thousands.  Men,  too,  mostly 
ex-soldiers,  came  to  welcome  back  a  pal  who  had  died 
out  there  in  that  great  comradeship  of  death.     To  each 

sa6 


THE  SOCIAL  REVOLUTION  IN  ENGLISH  LIFE 

woman  the  unknown  soldier  was  her  man;  to  each 
soldier  his  pal.  There  were  few  tears  in  the  crowd 
when  the  coffin  came,  with  an  old  tin  hat  and  gas  mask 
on  the  flag  which  draped  it.  No  tears,  but  a  wonderful 
silence  and  the  spirit  of  remembrance.  And  when 
the  coffin  passed,  led  by  the  King  and  his  generals, 
there  was  an  endless  line  of  folk  passing  by  the  Ceno- 
taph to  lay  little  bunches  of  flowers  on  the  pedestal  of 
that  empty  shrine.  All  through  the  da^^s  and  nights 
for  a  week  of  days  and  nights,  never  stopping,  never 
speaking,  a  living  tide  flowed  by,  paying  the  homage 
of  their  souls  to  the  dead,  and  for  more  than  a  week 
of  days  and  nights  they  passed  into  the  Abbey,  to 
walk  by  the  grave  of  the  unknown  soldier  who  was  theirs. 
The  soul  of  England  remembers. 

But  her  people  hide  their  wounds,  and  foreigners 
who  go  to  England  are  startled  to  find  so  little  trace 
of  war's  scars.  They  see  the  streets  thronged  by  cheer- 
ful people,  well  dressed,  well  fed,  prosperous  looking. 
"England  has  recovered  marvelously,"  they  say.  '*She 
has  returned  to  normal.     She  is  the  same  old  England. " 

That  is  untrue.  There  will  never  be  the  same  old 
England  again.  It  is  a  new  and  diff'erent  England.  Not 
yet  has  the  country  recovered  from  the  drains  of  war, 
nor  paid  the  price  of  victory. 


VI 

For  a  long  time  England  was  the  great,  rich,  strong 
country  of  the  Allies.  In  the  early  years  of  war  English 
gold,  all  the  savings  of  centuries,  was  the  Fortunatus's 
purse  of  other  fighting  nations.  We  supplied  France, 
Italy,  Russia,  Greece  with  money  and  materials  of 
war.  They  borrowed  and  borrowed  from  us.  Then 
our  wealth  was  exhausted  and  it  was  our  turn  to  borrow, 
from  a  nation  richer  than  we  had  been.     At  the  present 

227 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

time  we  owe  one  thousand  millions  of  pounds  sterling 
to  the  American  people,  and  I  suppose  one  day  we  shall 
pay  our  debt,  unless  there  is  a  general  understanding 
to  wipe  out  the  Allied  debts  all  round.  Meanwhile 
the  wealth  of  England  is  no  more  than  the  promise  of 
the  future  as  it  may  be  fulfilled  by  the  industry  of  the 
people.  All  the  money — the  paper,  anyway — issued 
by  the  government  is  a  promissory  note  on  the  future. 
Deeper  and  deeper  the  government  is  pledging  the 
future  in  order  to  make  present  payments.  The  cost 
of  carrying  on  the  country  is  ten  times  more  than  it 
was  before  the  war,  owing  to  the  increased  cost  of  every- 
thing that  is  essential  to  the  life  and  safety  of  the  nation 
or  to  the  ambitions  and  purposes  of  Enghsh  leaders. 
After  "the  war  to  end  war"  the  army  and  navy  cost 
two  hundred  and  seventy  millions  of  pounds  a  year,  which 
is  much  more  than  twice  as  much  as  the  prewar  annual 
budget  for  all  the  purposes  of  national  life  and  progress. 
On  our  military  and  administrative  adventure  in  Meso- 
potamia the  government  spent  forty  millions  of  pounds  a 
year,  until  the  pressure  of  public  opinion  forced  it  to 
curtail  this  cost,  which  served  no  other  purpose  than  to 
"boost"  up  the  oil  sharks. 

The  interest  on  our  national  debt  is  each  year  three 
hundred  and  forty-five  miUions  of  pounds,  nearly  three 
times  as  much  as  the  prewar  annual  budget.  To  obtain 
this  revenue  the  Enghsh  folk  are  taxed  beyond  their 
patience  and  endurance.  There  is  no  mercy  in  this 
taxation.  Capital  is  squeezed  of  all  its  profits  now, 
and  the  profiteer  is  outraged  by  this  capture  of  his 
wealth.  But  all  employers  and  manufacturers  are 
hit  hard — bludgeoned — by  the  tax  collectors.  One 
man  I  know,  a  big  coal  owner  and  employer  of  labor, 
has  to  pay  twelve  shillings  and  sixpence  out  of  every 
twenty  shillings  of  his  revenue.  The  middle-class 
man  of  small  fortune  pays  twenty-five  per  cent  of  his 

228 


THE  SOCIAL  REVOLUTION  IN  ENGLISH  LIFE 

income  in  taxation.  At  the  beginning  of  1921,  when 
economic  reaUties  were  faced  for  the  first  time,  money 
was  so  "tight"  in  England  that  the  banks  refused 
further  loans  to  commercial  and  industrial  companies, 
and  many  manufacturers  found  it  impossible  to  "carry 
on."  They  were  in  a  tragic  dilemma.  The  markets 
of  central  Europe,  Russia,  and  Asia  had  collapsed. 
Those  were  unable  to  buy  either  manufactured  goods 
or  raw  material  on  any  scale  suJEficient  to  sustain  the 
old  prosperity  of  Enghsh  factories.  At  the  same  time 
labor  in  England  refused  to  lower  its  scale  of  wages 
to  anything  like  the  prewar  level,  or,  indeed,  at  all, 
the  consequence  being  that  the  cost  of  production  re- 
mained too  high  for  competition  in  any  foreign  markets, 
and  the  retail  prices  in  England  were  not  falling,  and 
could  not  fall,  to  their  old  level.  Capital  itself  was  nervous 
of  "cutting  its  losses"  by  wholesale  reductions  in  prices, 
and  decided  to  challenge  the  whole  position  of  labor 
by  declaring  a  lockout,  closing  down  factories,  and 
biding  its  time  until  the  rising  tide  of  unemployment — 
a  tidal  wave — brought  the  workingmen  to  their  senses. 
Unless  they  reduced  their  wage  claims  England  would 
soon  be  threatened  with  bankruptcy. 


VII 

The  first  round  in  the  great  struggle  was  fought  out 
with  the  coal  miners.  They  had  for  a  long  time  been  a 
privileged  class  of  labor,  earning  high  wages  during 
the  war,  yet  never  satisfied,  even  at  the  time  of  their 
prosperity,  owing  to  certain  inequalities  of  conditions 
and  rewards  in  the  various  coal  fields.  Influenced  by 
local  leaders,  many  of  them  men  of  fine  character  and 
brain  power,  and  by  agitators  of  a  low,  revolutionary, 
tub-thumping  kind,  they  were  deeply  suspicious  of  the 
owners,  whose  profits  seemed  to  them  out  of  all  propor- 

229 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

tion  with  that  of  labor.  They  could  see  no  reason 
why  men  like  the  Duke  of  Northumberland  or  women 
hke  Viscountess  Rhondda,  by  a  mere  accident  of  birth 
which  put  them  in  one  cradle  rather  than  another, 
should  get  royalties  on  all  the  mineral  beneath  their 
inherited  land,  without  doing  a  hand's  turn  of  work  to 
improve  the  machinery  or  management  of  the  mines. 
For  some  time  the  idea  of  nationalization  appealed  to 
them  as  the  Magna  Charta  of  the  mine  industry.  If  all 
mines  were  worked  by  the  government,  their  inequalities 
of  service  and  reward  could  be  adjusted,  and  a  greater 
common  wage  could  be  secured  for  the  workers.  This 
question  was  forced  to  the  front  after  repeated  strikes, 
especially  in  South  Wales,  the  storm  center,  and  at 
last  the  government  under  Lloyd  George  appointed  a 
commission  to  inquire  into  the  whole  problem  of  the 
coal  industry,  with  a  pledge  that  they  would  not  refuse 
the  report  of  the  majority  on  the  commission  under 
the  chairmanship  of  Mr.  Justice  Sankey.  After  many 
sittings  of  a  dramatic  character  in  which  ducal  coal 
owners  and  others  were  subjected  to  keen  cross-exami- 
nation by  the  miners'  representatives,  and  made  but 
a  poor  showing,  as  most  people  admitted,  in  defense  of 
their  hereditary  privileges  and  their  amazing  ignorance 
of  their  own  source  of  wealth,  the  Sankey  report  was 
issued  and  was  in  favor  of  nationalization.  The  min- 
ers naturally  demanded  the  fulfillment  of  the  govern- 
ment pledges  to  act  upon  its  findings,  and  when  a  year 
passed  and  it  became  plain  that  the  government  had 
no  intention  whatever  of  doing  so,  the  word  ''betrayal" 
was  used  from  Cardiff  to  Newcastle  by  millions  of  men. 
From  that  time  their  confidence  in  the  government  was 
destroyed.  They  had  "no  use"  for  Lloyd  George,  who 
once  had  been  their  hero.  In  1920,  when  the  export  of 
coal  to  foreign  countries  was  still  a  source  of  great  profit, 
owing  to  exorbitant  rates  charged  to  foreign  countries, 

230 


THE  SOCIAL  REVOLUTION  IN  ENGLISH  LIFE 

the  miners  tried  their  strength  by  striking  for  a  bigger 
share  of  those  profits.  To  win  the  favor  of  pubHc 
opinion,  they  also  demanded  that  fourteen  shilhngs  and 
sixpence  a  ton  should  be  taken  off  the  price  to  home 
consumers.  They  were  beaten  on  both  issues,  and 
surrendered  temporarily,  not  without  anger  and  smol- 
dering discontent. 

Then  in  the  spring  of  192 1  the  government  flung  a 
bombshell  into  the  coal  industry  by  an  abrupt  abandon- 
ment of  "control."  Throughout  the  war  and  for  two 
and  a  half  years  afterward  the  government  had 
"controlled"  the  industry  by  an  arrangement  with 
the  owners  by  which  they  received  a  certain  share  of 
profit  in  return  for  subsidizing  the  cost  of  production 
in  order  to  maintain  the  men's  wages  at  the  level  agreed 
upon  from  time  to  time.  It  had  been  officially  an- 
nounced that  the  government  control  would  continue 
until  August,  but  without  warning  the  date  was  altered 
to  March.  Again  the  miners  used  the  word  "betrayal," 
and  even  some  of  the  mine  owners  protested  against 
the  alteration.  What  had  happened  to  alter  the  gov- 
ernment plans  was  a  sudden  icy  blast  of  fear  on  the  sub- 
ject of  national  finance.  Expert  advisers  warned  the 
Cabinet  that  if  their  policy  of  expenditure,  at  home  and 
abroad,  were  continued  much  longer,  the  bottom  would 
fall  out  of  the  Treasury.  The  millions  of  pounds  spent 
on  pensions,  doles,  and  subsidies,  to  say  nothing  of 
imperial  expenditure,  could  not  be  balanced  by  income 
from  the  national  industry,  which  was  showing  signs  of 
rapid  declirle.  The  burden  of  taxation  on  capital  was 
crippling  all  enterprise  and  development.  Employers 
of  labor  were  shutting  down  their  works  on  all  sides, 
and  our  export  trade  suddenly  "slumped"  to  an  alarm- 
ing degree.  Coal  exports  above  all  dropped  with  a  rush 
for  lack  of  orders.  France,  Italy,  and  other  countries 
which  had  been  forced  to  pay  our  high  prices  in  their 

231 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

desperate  need  of  fuel  after  the  war,  could  now  do 
without  ours.  The  German  deliveries  were  beyond 
the  capacity  of  France  to  use  in  her  own  factories. 
The  surplus  she  sold  to  Italy  and  others.  American 
coal  was  coming  cheaper  to  the  Continent,  across  the 
Atlantic,  than  we  could  sell  it  from  South  Wales.  The 
cost  of  production  in  our  coal  fields,  owing  to  the  high 
standard  of  wages  and  low  standard  of  output,  was  no 
longer  possible  in  respect  of  these  new  conditions.  It 
was  then  that  the  government  abandoned  control  and 
handed  back  the  mines  to  the  owners,  with  the  sugges- 
tion that  they  must  make  the  best  of  a  bad  business. 
Between  mine  owners,  managers,  and  Cabinet  Ministers 
there  were  a  few  whispered  words,  a  slight  deflection  of 
eyelids,  a  nod  of  assent.  "The  men  must  be  brought 
to  heel.  A  drastic  cut  in  wages!  Of  course  they'll 
fight,  but  now  is  the  time,  and  it's  got  to  be  done." 
It  was  done  in  the  worst  possible  way  and  led  to  the 
gravest  risk.     It  was  the  risk  of  civil  war. 

It  is  hardly  to  be  denied  by  honest  thinkers  with 
some  knowledge  of  human  passion  that  England  was 
very  near  to  revolution  in  the  critical  days  of  the  coal 
crisis  in  the  spring  of  1921.  Only  a  few  hours  and  a 
few  men  were  between  the  challenge  and  the  conflict. 
If  ten  o'clock  had  struck  on  Friday  night,  the  15th  of 
April,  without  a  repeal  of  the  notices  to  the  railway  and 
transport  men,  there  would  have  been,  certainly,  a 
class  warfare  leading  to  bloodshed  and  civil  disorder  of 
the  wildest  kind. 

That  was  not  in  any  way  because  the  miners  and 
their  allies  desired  revolution.  But  when  certain  forces 
are  set  in  motion  certain  results  are  bound  to  happen, 
according  to  all  laws  of  human  experience,  and  those 
forces  were  assembling  on  two  sides,  directly  hostile, 
ready   for   action.     On  the  one   side  were   millions   of 

men  believing  honestly  that  there  was  a  powerful  con- 

232 


THE  SOCIAL  REVOLUTION  IN  ENGLISH  LIFE 

spiracy  against  them  on  the  part  of  the  employers  of 
labor  and  the  government  to  force  them  to  the  accept- 
ance of  wages  below  the  level  of  decent  livelihood  and 
to  smash  the  power  of  their  labor  organization  by  which 
they  had  obtained  protection  and  a  decent  wage  rate 
after  centuries  of  struggle.  On  the  other  side  was  the 
government  supported  by  the  aristocracy  and  mid- 
dle class  (from  whom  they  were  recruiting  a  powerful 
Defense  Force)  believing  with  equal  sincerity,  and  more 
fear,  that  the  general  strike  was  a  revolutionary  blow 
at  the  life  of  the  nation,  and  a  deliberate  menace  to  all 
constitutional  authority  which  must  be  defended  by 
all  available  force.  If  that  is  not  setting  the  hsts  for 
an  ordeal  by  battle  between  two  great  classes  then 
history  is  a  mockery  of  fact. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  tell  what  would  have  happened. 
I  have  seen  strikes  in  England  before,  and  in  other 
countries,  localized  and  trivial  in  comparison  with  this 
one  menaced,  which  give  me  a  fair  idea  of  the  larger 
scale.  The  members  of  all  the  trades  in  the  Triple 
AUiance  would  have  been  divided.  Many  of  the  rail- 
way men  and  transport  workers  would  have  refused 
to  obey  the  strike  orders.  It  was  for  that  reason  that 
J.  H.  Thomas  withdrew  them.  But  this  division  among 
the  men  themselves  would  have  led  inevitably  to  passion 
and  violence  with  the  cry  of  "Scabs"  and  "Blacklegs." 
The  government,  with  crowds  of  volunteers  from  the 
middle  class  and  the  ranks  of  the  nonstrikers,  would 
have  carried  out  an  effective  service  for  the  elementary 
necessities  of  national  life — not  more  than  that.  This 
success  would  have  still  further  embittered  milHons 
of  men,  standing  idle,  loafing  about  goods  yards  and 
station  entrances,  congregating  in  mobs  around  fire- 
eating  orators,  among  whom  would  have  been  the 
revolutionar}^  fanatics,  the  communists  ready  for  social 
destruction  at  all  costs,  and  the  usual  minority  of  young 

16  233 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

thieves  and  blackguards  scenting  loot,  with  itching 
fingers  for  other  folks'  property.  Presently  there 
would  have  been  restlessness  among  the  out-of-works, 
sullen  boredom,  then  hunger.  There  would  have  been 
darkness  in  the  great  cities,  the  wailing  of  ill-fed  children 
in  workless  homes,  the  excitement  of  women,  the  sense 
of  fear,  which  is  the  father  of  cruelty.  A  riot,  an  order 
to  fire,  a  young  officer  losing  his  head,  new  recruits 
shooting  into  unarmed  mobs — ^what  could  prevent 
that  sequence  of  events  in  many  places  often  repeated .? 
Then  the  fury  of  mobs  denouncing  "bloody  tyranny," 
"the  butchery  of  the  people,"  and  shouting  for  venge- 
ance. Among  the  Defense  Force,  the  "White  Guards," 
as  they  were  already  called  derisively  by  the  communist 
group — there  were  great  numbers  of  miners,  thousands 
of  laborers  glad  to  get  "back  to  the  army  again" 
because  they  had  been  out  of  a  job,  but  not  keen  to 
kill  their  own  class,  .  .  .  One's  imagination  need  go  on 
no  farther.  It  might  have  completed  the  ruin  of  old 
England,  of  all  Great  Britain,  and  brought  the  Empire 
down. 

Now  what  brought  England  to  such  a  possibility — ■ 
so  near,  so  horribly  near?  The  answer  to  this  is  the 
same  as  in  most  conflicts  which  risk  the  use  of  force  by 
which  no  victory  may  be  gained  except  at  the  price  of 
ruin.  Sheer  stupidity  and  a  little  wickedness.  It  is 
clear  that  there  was  astonishing  stupidity  on  both  sides 
and  something  of  the  other. 

To  take  the  government  and  the  mine  owners  first. 
They  showed  an  immense  lack  ot  foresight,  a  crass 
ignorance  of  ordinary  psychology,  in  allowing  the  situ- 
ation to  come  to  the  crisis  with  a  crash,  by  the  abrupt 
decontrol  of  the  coal  industry  six  months  earlier  than 
their  promise,  without  any  system  by  which  the  decrease 
in  wages  could  be  gradually  adjusted  to  the  falling  of 
prices  in  the  cost  of  living,  or  any  warning  to  the  men. 

234 


THE  SOCIAL  REVOLUTION  IN  ENGLISH  LIFE 

'  Did  they  think  the  miners  would  accept  the  new  con- 
,  ditions,  so  paralyzing  to  their  standard  of  hving  during 
the  period  of  subsidized  prosperity,  without  a  desperate 
struggle  which  would  inevitably  cost  the  nation  more 
than  a  transitional  period  of  financial  aid?  The  cost 
of  the  Defense  Force  was  nearly  a  million  pounds  a 
I  week,  out  of  the  pockets  of  the  taxpayers.  The  loss 
in  coal  output  and  trade  was  many  millions  a  week- — 
far  more  than  a  decreasing  scale  of  assistance  which 
would  tide  over  the  time  of  "slump,"  while  wages 
were  being  readjusted  gradually. 

And  the  mine  owners — did  they  believe  when  they 
issued  the  lockout  notices  and  flung  the  new  scale  of 
wages  at  the  miners,  with  a  "take  it"  or  "leave  it," 
that  those  men  would  say:  "How  good  and  kind  you  are, 
dear  gentlemen!  Of  course  we  will  work  for  wages 
which  will  reduce  a  million  of  us  to  the  old  standards  of 
sweated  industries,  because  we  love  our  country  so 
much!"  The  mine  owners  knew  perfectly  well  that  the 
men  would  reject  this  new  scale  utterly.  They  knew, 
and  they  have  afterward  admitted,  under  pressure, 
that  the  proposed  wage  "cuts"  were  excessively  severe, 
unreasonable,  and  unacceptable,  to  such  an  extent 
that  afterward  they  were  forced  to  revise  them  sub- 
stantially in  favor  of  the  poorer  classes  of  mine  labor. 
Why  this  admission  after  the  conflict  had  begun? 
Why  not  have  put  reasonable,  instead  of  unreasonable, 
proposals  before  the  miners  and  the  public,  some  months 
before  the  lockout  notices  were  posted,  so  that  all 
would  have  had  full  warning  and  time  for  discussion, 
negotiation,  and  compromise  while  the  pits  were  still 
working  ?  It  is  the  curse  of  our  national  life  that  these 
industrial  troubles  are  conducted  on  lines  of  warfare 
between  capital  and  labor — secret  mobifizing,  a  sud- 
den ultimatum,  wild  and  whirling  appeals  to  preju- 
dice  by   the   propaganda   departments,   then   clearing 

235 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

for  action.  In  this  crisis  the  mine  owners  risked  the 
whole  Hfe  of  the  nation  by  adopting  that  method  of 
argument,  with  a  willful  and  wicked  disregard  of  con- 
sequences. Their  ultimatum  to  the  miners  was  as 
provocative  as  the  Austrian  ultimatum  to  Serbia  which 
led  to  the  World  War.  It  was  unacceptable  by  self- 
respecting  men,  anxious  for  the  decent  living  of  wives 
and  children.  It  was  intended  to  be  unacceptable — and 
that  is  the  guilt  of  the  mine  owners,  with  the  secret 
connivance  of  the  government. 

The  miners  were  equally  lacking  in  wisdom,  and,  in 
one  particular,  criminal  in  their  folly.  They  were 
right  in  rejecting  terms  which  would  have  reduced  at 
least  a  million  of  them  to  wages  in  real  value  below  the 
line  of  bare  necessity,  wages,  for  instance,  which  in 
the  case  of  South  Wales  laborers  would  be  cut  by 
forty-nine  and  a  half  per  cent,  reducing  them  to  38j-. 
i\d.  per  week,  reckoned  in  purchasing  power  as  ijs. 
at  1914  prices — a  slave  wage.  Their  insanity  was  in 
alienating  the  vast  majority  of  the  nation  by  the  threat 
to  wreck  the  mines,  their  own  future  livelihood,  and  the 
industry  of  the  country  itself,  by  the  withdrawal  of 
the  safety  men  and  violent  opposition  to  volunteers. 
It  is  true  that  the  mine  owners  handed  the  lockout 
notices  to  the  pump  men  as  to  all  others,  thereby  asking 
for  the  trouble  that  came,  but  the  miners  should  have 
made  themselves  guardians  of  their  own  source  of  life, 
according  to  the  elementary  rules  of  common  sense  and 
a  quality  of  spirit  nobler  than  blind  passion. 

The  Triple  Alliance  conducted  its  negotiations  and 
its  strategy  with  a  staggering  lack  of  discretion,  and  a 
recklessness  of  national  consequence  which  would  have 
sent  us  all  hurtling  into  the  gulfs  of  ruin  but  for  a  sudden 
confession  of  their  own  "bluff"  on  the  edge  of  the  chasm. 
The  leaders  of  the  railway  and  transport  workers  knew 

that  they  would  not  get  the  allegiance  of  great  numbers 

236 


THE  SOCIAL  REVOLUTION  IN  ENGLISH  LIFE 

of  their  men  to  the  call  for  a  general  strike.  They  knew 
that  such  a  strike  would  develop  into  a  class  warfare  in 
which  their  own  members  would  be  divided  against 
each  other.  ...  It  is  to  the  credit  of  J.  H.  Thomas  and 
some  others  that  in  the  end  they  forced  the  extremists 
to  look  at  the  stark  realities  of  the  ruin  they  faced  in- 
stead of  mouthing  passionate  nonsense  and  leading 
broken  battalions  to  disaster. 

The  cross-examination  of  the  mine  owners  and  of 
Frank  Hodges,  the  miners'  young  leader,  in  a  committee 
room  of  the  House  of  Commons  by  a  crowd  of  members, 
inspired  at  last  by  the  gravity  of  national  danger  to 
act  like  respectable  men  instead  of  like  a  flock  of  sheep 
under  the  discipline  of  the  Welsh  shepherd,  was  one 
of  the  most  dramatic  episodes  in  English  history,  and 
did  something  to  restore  the  position  and  independence 
of  the  private  members  which  had  been  utterly  lost.  It 
revealed  facts  which  had  been  concealed  by  the  vague 
generalities  of  challenge  and  counter-challenge.  It 
tore  out  the  falsity  of  propaganda  from  the  case  of  the 
mine  owners,  dragged  admissions  from  them  about 
the  injustice  of  the  new  wage  proposals.  From  Frank 
Hodges  it  produced  the  possibility  of  concessions  from 
the  points  ot  pride  and  passion,  and  made  new  negotia- 
tions possible,  giving  J.  H.  Thomas  his  chance  of  escape 
from  "direct  action"  and  the  suicide  of  the  General 
Strike. 

The  second  breakdown  of  negotiations  between  the 
miners,  owners,  and  government  produced  a  reaction 
of  public  sympathy  against  the  miners,  who  had  won 
a  good  deal  of  sympathy  by  the  earlier  presentation  of 
their  case.  The  offer  of  a  temporary  subsidy  of  ten 
millions  of  pounds  from  the  government  seemed  a 
generous  departure  from  the  rigid  principle  they  had 
laid  down,  and  the  miners'  renewed  insistence  upon  a 
national  pool  seemed  to  superficial  minds,  especially  to 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

those  who  have  Bolshevism  on  the  brain,  the  revelation 
of  a  sinister  motive,  plainly  political  and  revolutionary 
instead  of  economic. 

This  accusation,  made  as  his  last  word  in  the  House  of 
Commons  by  Sir  Robert  Home,  in  his  gloomy  announce- 
ment of  the  breakdown  of  negotiations,  was  repudiated 
firmly  by  the  miners'  leaders,  and  it  was  clear  to  all 
who  followed  the  arguments  of  Frank  Hodges  with 
care  and  understanding  that  his  conviction  was  stub- 
born on  the  point  that  without  some  kind  of  a  national 
pool,  regulating  district  wages,  there  could  be  no  chance 
of  equality  in  earnings  between  those  who  worked  just 
as  hard  in  places  of  poorer  possibilities.  However  much 
one  might  disagree  with  the  idea  of  "pooling,"  upon 
general  principles  related  to  all  industry,  it  was  surely 
not  "political"  in  its  argument,  and  it  was  difficult 
to  understand  the  stubborn  refusal  of  the  government 
to  enter  even  into  a  discussion  of  the  plan  unless  they 
were  partisans,  unconsciously  or  consciously,  of  the 
mine  owners. 

VIII 

One  thing  was  made  clear  by  this  disastrous  conflict 
which  in  a  few  weeks  inflicted  enormous  and  irretriev- 
able damage  upon  the  main  industries  of  Great  Britain, 
produced  widespread  unemployment  which  will  not 
soon  be  remedied,  and  startled  the  world  by  a  revelation 
of  social  strife  in  this  country  at  a  time  when  they 
were  looking  for  our  leadership  in  reconstruction.  It 
is  the  urgent,  desperate  need  of  a  new  spirit  of  under- 
standing and  self-sacrifice  among  employers  and  em- 
ployed for  the  sake  of  the  nation  itself  which  is  drawing 
rapidly  near  to  economic  disaster.  The  men  must  be 
educated  in  the  knowledge  that  British  industry  is  so 
crippled  that  there  must  be  harder  work  and  less  wages, 
or  no  work   and  no  wages.     The  employers   must   be 

238 


THE  SOCIAL  REVOLUTION  IN  ENGLISH  LIFE 

led  to  realize  that  they  must  guarantee  a  decent  living 
wage  and  reduce  their  standards  and  hopes  of  profit 
accordingly,  or  lose  all  they  have  in  a  general  bank- 
ruptcy. There  is  no  other  way  out  than  self-sacrifice 
all  round. 

But  what  tragedy  it  all  has  been,  and  Is — this  ma- 
neuvering for  positions  in  a  national  conflict,  this  lack 
of  candor  and  reason  on  both  sides,  this  playing  with 
fire,  this  refusal  by  the  leaders  of  the  nation,  the  news- 
papers and  the  people,  to  look  truth  in  the  face,  and  to 
understand  the  real  causes  and  conditions  of  our  present 
state!  We  are  still  playing  the  fool  with  facts,  concen- 
trating on  quack  remedies  for  minor  ailments,  while 
we  are  stricken  by  a  disease  which  can  only  be  cured  by 
a  combined  national  policy  based  upon  understanding 
of  larger  issues,  enormous  courage,  general  sacrifice, 
and  spiritual  magnanimity. 

What  is  now  the  character  and  temper  of  British 
labor?  Upon  that  answer  depends  not  only  the 
future  of  England,  and  of  the  British  Empire,  but  to 
a  great  extent  the  future  of  white  civilization  in  Europe. 
For  England  is  still  the  rock  upon  which  the  European 
nations  largely  cling  for  safety — a  moral  as  well  as  a 
material  rock.  If  England  were  to  go  the  way  of 
revolution,  or  fall  into  chaos  and  anarchy,  it  is  my 
firm  conviction  that  there  would  be  no  hope  at  all  for 
Europe,  which  w^ould  fall  rapidly  itself  into  decay  and 
despair.  France  cannot  save  herself  without  English 
help;  Italy  cannot;  there  would  be  no  indemnities  from 
Germany.  Russian  Bolshevism  would  find  open  gates; 
the  Mohammedan  powers  would  sweep  down  upon 
defenseless  minorities;  the  moral  structure  of  Europe 
would  collapse.  All  that  is  certain,  beyond  all  arguments 
or  dispute.  What,  then,  is  the  character  and  temper 
of  English  labor? 

It  is  truculent,  aggressive,  and,  in  minorities  here  and 

239 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

there,  revolutionary.  The  actual  labor  leaders,  men 
like  Thomas,  G.  N.  Barnes,  Clynes,  Lansbury,  and 
others,  are  more  moderate  than  the  rank  and  file  be- 
hind them.  Thomas  especially  is  a  man  of  statesmanlike 
views,  much  education  and  experience,  who  has  no  desire 
to  become  a  revolutionary  figure  or  to  work  the  machine 
of  labor  organization  by  violent  and  shattering  con- 
flict. Behind  the  moderate  leaders,  however,  there 
is  a  strong  pressure  of  younger  and  more  reckless  men 
who  are  eager  to  use  the  power  of  the  trade-union  for 
political  as  well  as  economic  purposes — ^which  is  a  new 
claim  as  far  as  English  labor  is  concerned.  Several 
times  they  have  tried  their  strength  in  this  way,  with 
doubtful  results,  because  it  is  contrary  to  the  instincts 
of  the  great  body  of  middle-class  folk  who  still  repre- 
sent the  deciding  factor  in  English  hfe.  The  attempt 
of  the  coal  miners  to  dictate  the  policy  of  the  govern- 
ment beyond  the  arbitrament  of  wages,  to  regulate 
prices  to  the  consumer,  failed  quickly  and  resulted  in 
surrender.  But  there  was  recently  another  action 
on  the  part  of  organized  labor  which  proved  the  poUti- 
cal  power  of  their  organization  when  supported  by  the 
general  conviction  of  the  country.  It  was  when  there 
was  a  rumor,  not  unsupported  by  evidence,  that  the 
government  proposed  to  raise  a  military  expedition  for 
the  attempted  overthrow  of  the  Soviet  regime  in  Russia, 
in  defense  of  Poland.  This  was  more  than  mere  popular 
rumor.  It  was  sufficiently  grave  to  cause  a  leading 
article  in  the  London  Times  announcing  that  England 
was  as  near  to  a  new  great  war,  calling  upon  all  the 
strength  and  sacrifice  of  the  people,  as  in  1914.  The 
trade-unions  set  up  overnight  a  central  committee 
which  they  called  a  Council  of  Action,  and  sent  word 
to  the  government  that  the  whole  power  of  organized 
labor  in  England  would  be  used  to  prevent  any  such 
war.     The  government  repUed  that  they  had  no  inten- 

240 


THE  SOCIAL  REVOLUTION  IN  ENGLISH  LIFE 

tion  of  preparing  a  new    military    expedition.  ...  It 
did  not  take  place. 

All  this  is  undoubtedly  revolutionary  in  its  spirit.  It 
is  a  new  phase  of  the  labor  movement  in  England, 
which  up  to  recent  years  was  entirely  limited  to  the 
economic  conditions  of  industrial  life.  It  is  stoked  up 
and  inflamed  by  the  outpost  leaders  of  Bolshevism  who 
have  estabhshed  themselves  strongly  in  Glasgow,  Liver- 
pool, and  Wales.  They  are  out  for  destruction.  They 
want  to  smash  all  the  structure  of  English  government, 
all  order,  all  law.  They  are  in  direct  touch  with  Russian 
and  other  foreign  communists,  and  they  do  not  shrink 
from  the  thought  of  the  same  methods  and  the  same 
results  as  those  in  the  Russian  upheaval.  Lately, 
however,  the  communist  theory  has  been  discredited 
and  largely  abandoned  by  the  mass  of  English  workers, 
many  of  whom,  for  a  time,  were  inclined  to  believe 
that  this  was  the  new  and  true  gospel  of  democratic 
progress.  The  visits  of  English  labor  leaders  to  Russia, 
and  their  unanimous  condemnation  of  the  Bolshevik 
autocracy  and  the  slave  state  of  the  Russian  workers, 
undeceived  the  majority  even  of  the  younger  hotheads. 
But  although  the  philosophy  of  communism  has  been 
dropped  hke  a  sharp-edged  weapon  cutting  the  hand 
that  held  it,  there  is  still  a  vague,  loose,  and  dangerous 
current  of  revolutionary  impulse  in  English  labor  ranks, 
not  less  menacing  because  undecided  in  its  purpose. 

The  successive  waves  of  unemployment  which  many 
of  the  workers  believe  to  be  deliberately  engineered  by 
employers  in  order  to  keep  down  prices  are  intensifying 
the  spirit  of  revolt  and  of  challenge  to  the  present  order 
of  things.  This  spirit  is  patronized,  rather  flattered, 
by  a  number  of  the  younger  intellectuals,  who  play 
about  with  the  idea  of  revolution  as  children  with  fire, 
not  knowing  that  they  will  be  burned  up  if  the  red 
embers  jump  out  of  the  grate. 

241 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

It  is  certain  that  the  actions  of  the  Coahtion  govern- 
ment since  the  war  have  created  a  sense  of  exasperation 
and  distrust  in  the  minds  of  the  people,  and  at  the  pres- 
ent time  there  is  a  wide,  unbridgeable  gulf  between  that 
government  and  the  spirit  and  ideals  of  the  nation  as 
a  whole.  The  capitahst  as  well  as  the  workingman  is 
aghast  at  the  reckless  expenditure  of  the  government 
on  imperial  adventures,  on  the  army  and  navy,  and  on 
purposes  that  seem  to  them  wasteful  and  sinister. 
Disappointment  with  the  effects  of  peace,  the  increasing 
troubles  of  industry,  the  spread  of  social  decay  in 
central  Europe,  the  burden  of  armaments  still  pressing 
heavily,  and  the  fear  of  new  wars  have  reacted  against 
all  confidence  in  the  men  who  still  control  the  destiny 
of  England.  They  have  settled  nothing.  They  have 
failed  in  the  larger  vision.  They  are  acting  in  Ireland 
with  passion  and  no  wisdom.  They  have  tried  to  buy 
off  trouble  in  England  by  promises  which  cannot  be 
redeemed.  This  failure — almost  inevitable  without 
great  leadership,  which  is  lacking — has  produced  a 
seething  discontent  which  will  lead  to  unpleasant 
events,  serious  disturbances,  in  the  order  of  English 
life.  And  the  state  of  Europe,  its  general  malady,  is 
beginning  to  touch  England  very  closely. 

Yet,  though  I  see  the  gravity  of  all  this,  and  its 
darkness,  I  believe  that  England  will  pull  through  and 
carry  on.  There  is  in  Enghsh  character  still  an  intui- 
tive, inarticulate  wisdom.  In  spite  of  all  the  modi- 
fications caused  by  war,  there  is  a  solid  common  sense, 
a  sense  of  compromise  and  the  middle  way,  which  be- 
longs to  centuries  of  English  tradition  and  is  not  yet 
deadened.  The  passion  of  the  extremists  leaves  the 
main  body  of  English  men  and  women  cold  as  ice.  Dis- 
content, distress,  exasperation,  lead  to  violent  speech, 
but  rarely  to  violent  action  within  the  heart  of  England 
untouched  by  the  fire  of  the  Celtic  fringe.     In  the  past 

242 


THE  SOCIAL  REVOLUTION  IN  ENGLISH  LIFE 

centuries  there  have  been  worse  times  than  now,  but 
people  have  suffered  them  with  patience,  with  hard 
resolution,  with  high  and  noble  valor.  They  have 
always  taken  the  middle  way.  I  think  they  will  now. 
Out  of  present  trouble  England  will  emerge  with  her  old 
spirit  of  stolidity,  resource,  and  energy.  If  not,  then 
other  peoples  will  be  hurt,  grievously.  If  England 
goes  down  in  decay,  so  will  all  Europe,  and  even  America 
will  not  be  scathless.  If  the  British  Empire,  depend- 
ent still  on  England  as  the  axle  wheel  of  its  progress, 
breaks  up  or  falls  apart,  there  will  be  a  flaming  anarchy 
in  its  ancient  possessions — in  India,  Egypt,  Africa — ■ 
before  which  the  horrors  of  the  last  war  will  be  but 
playful  things.  If  the  English  people  take  the  road  to 
revolution  no  country  will  be  safe  for  democracy,  or  in 
any  way  secure  of  life,  and  white  civilization,  as  we  now 
know  it  and  like  it,  will  be  doomed.  Other  races,  not 
white,  will  press  forward  over  our  ruin  and  decadence. 
But  that,  by  the  grace  of  God  and  the  spirit  of  a  great 
race,  shall  not  happen  yet,  unless  madness  overtakes 
all  sanity,  which  must  not  happen. 


VII 

THE   WARNING   OF  AUSTRIA 


THE  new  Republic  of  Austria  created  by  the  Treaty  of 
Versailles — that  is  to  say,  by  certain  elderly  diplomats 
sitting  round  a  table  and  rearranging  the  map  of  the 
world  without  much  knowledge  of  the  human  hopes 
and  agonies  involved  in  their  decisions — became  a 
tragic  object  lesson  of  all  that  was  most  miserable,  hope- 
less, and  diseased  in  the  malady  of  Europe  after  the 
war.  All  the  economic  evils  that  afflicted  such  a  country 
as  Italy  and  threatened  many  other  countries  like  France 
and  Germany,  and  to  some  extent  England,  reached 
their  fullest  development  in  Austria. 

Other  countries  were  overburdened  by  war  debts, 
weakened  by  the  decreasing  production  of  labor,  and 
poverty-stricken  by  the  inflation  of  money,  which  was 
turned  out  easily  enough  from  the  printing  presses  but 
had  not  reality  enough  to  buy  raw  material  or  the  ele- 
mentary necessities  of  life  from  more  prosperous  parts 
of  the  world,  so  that  the  value  of  this  paper  money 
dropped  low  in  foreign  exchanges,  while  prices  soared 
to  fantastic  heights  and  wages  struggled  to  keep  pace 
with  them — and  failed.  Even  England  was  touched  by 
that  disease — England  which  was  envied  by  all  her 
neighbors  as  rich  and  fat  in  her  prosperity — and 
France  and  Italy  were  seriously  sick  of  the  same  eco- 
nomic  malady.     But    Austria   was   more   than   sick — 

Austria  was  dying. 

244 


THE  WARNING  OF  AUSTRIA 

It  was  a  ghoulish  thing  to  sit  at  the  deathbed  of  those 
Austrian  people,  as  I  did,  studying  the  symptoms  of 
this  mortality,  watching  the  death  agony,  probing  into 
the  cause  of  this  scourge.  Yet  if  Europe  would  save 
herself  from  something  like  the  same  doom  and  find  a 
way  of  escape  from  a  general  danger  which  was  creeping 
closer  to  many  countries,  the  truth  must  be  known. 
For  the  state  of  Austria  was  a  tremendous  rebuke  to 
the  shortsighted  diplomacy  which  utterly  failed  to 
realize  that  a  rearrangement  of  political  frontiers  must 
be  based  upon  the  physical  needs  and  conditions  of  the 
people  within  those  boundaries,  and  that  it  is  not  possi- 
ble to  violate  historical  evolution  for  the  sake  of  a  theory 
without  upsetting  a  natural  equilibrium.  It  was  also 
a  tragic  warning  to  all  the  nations  of  Europe  that  if  they 
harked  back  to  an  intense  national  egotism,  building 
barriers  between  themselves  and  their  neighbors, 
checking  the  natural  flow  of  trade  and  refusing  co-oper- 
ation and  mutual  helpfulness,  their  own  vitality  and 
wealth  would  be  impoverished  and  their  own  Hfe  men- 
aced by  the  illness  of  surrounding  peoples.  That  lesson 
has  not  yet  been  learned. 

Poor  Austria  was  the  world's  most  horrible  example 
of  the  results  of  political  cruelty  and  stupidity,  and 
yet  by  a  strange  irony  of  fate  was  also  the  most  striking 
case  of  a  general  desire  in  the  hearts  of  mankind  for 
charity  and  brotherhood  leading  to  some  new  system  of 
international  politics  which  might  give  real  life  and 
power  to  a  League  of  Nations.  That  was  a  most  ex- 
traordinary state  of  things  which  startled  one  as  soon  as 
one  entered  the  city  of  Vienna  with  its  stricken  popu- 
lation. The  psychology  of  those  two  and  a  half  million 
people  almost  defied  analysis  because  of  this  conflict 
between  cruelty  and  charity  of  which  they  were  the  vic- 
tims. They  saw  themselves  literally  sentenced  to  death 
by  the  provisions  of  the  peace  treaty.     Once  belonging 

245 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

to  the  capital  of  a  great  empire,  a  highly  civilized, 
artistic,  music-loving  folk,  living  on  the  products  of 
other  people's  labor,  on  the  business  of  exchange, 
finance,  clerkship,  the  handling  of  merchandise,  the 
demand  and  supply  of  Hfe's  little  luxuries,  the  profits 
of  administration  and  officialism,  like  so  many  of  the 
inhabitants  of  other  great  cities,  such  as  London,  Paris, 
and  New  York,  they  saw  themselves  cut  off  from  all 
their  old  sources  of  supply  and  from  all  their  trade  rela- 
tions with  surrounding  peoples  who  had  once  been  under 
their  government.  The  diplomats  at  Versailles  who 
drew  the  boundaries  of  the  new  Austrian  Republic  as  an 
isolation  camp  in  the  center  of  the  old  Austrian  Empire — 
divided  now  into  groups  of  peoples  of  different  races — 
cut  off  the  head  of  the  empire  from  its  body,  so  that 
Vienna  is  a  bulbous-headed  thing  without  a  torso. 

It  is  exactly  as  though  New  York  were  suddenly 
amputated  from  the  United  States,  or  as  though  London 
were  bounded  on  one  side  by  Surrey  and  Sussex  and  on 
the  north  by  the  shires  of  Bedford  and  Warwick, 
divorced  from  its  great  industrial  centers,  its  shipping 
trade,  its  mineral  wealth,  and  its  imperial  business.  A 
state  of  six  and  a  half  million  inhabitants,  Austria  is 
obliged  to  import  nearly  ninety  per  cent  of  her  coal, 
lacks  all  raw  material  necessary  for  her  factories,  with 
the  exception  of  wood  and  iron  ore,  has  neither  wool, 
linen,  leather,  nor  copper,  possesses  no  more  agricultural 
land  than  at  its  maximum  may  support  its  inhabitants 
for  three  months  a  year,  and  is  surrounded  by  new 
states  Hke  Czecho-Slovakia  and  Jugo-Slavia  and  Hun- 
gary, once  of  her  own  em.pire,  which  now  are  so  narrow 
in  their  national  egotism  that  they  will  not  send  any 
supplies  to  the  relief  of  Vienna  except  under  the  pressure 
of  foreign  influence. 

But   here   comes   the   strange   dilemma   in   Austrian 
minds.     Aghast  as  they  were  at  the  doom  which  befell 

246 


THE  WARNING  OF  AUSTRIA 

them,  they  might  well  have  hated  the  nations  who  were 
their  judges  and  their  executioners.  But  the  very 
peoples  who  condemned  them  to  death  were  those  who 
by  charity  and  not  by  cruelty  endeavored  to  postpone 
execution  and  to  keep  them  alive.  Sir  William  Goode, 
who  went  to  Vienna  as  chairman  of  the  reparation  com- 
mittee charged  with  the  task  of  securing  the  indemnity 
according  to  the  treaty,  found  himself  obliged  by  all 
the  instincts  of  humanity,  with  the  consent  of  the  govern- 
ments he  represented,  to  transform  his  reparation  com- 
mittee into  a  committee  of  relief.  Great  Britain  voted 
a  sum  of  thirty-five  miUion  pounds  for  the  relief  of 
Austria.  The  Swiss  Red  Cross,  first  to  attempt  rescue 
of  the  stricken  Austrians,  was  followed  by  the  enormous 
organization  of  Mr.  Hoover,  distributing  supplies  from 
the  United  States  and  Canada.  The  Scandinavian 
nations  co-operated  in  this  work  of  international  charity, 
which,  as  Mr.  Joseph  Redlich,  the  Austrian  represent- 
ative on  the  League  of  Nations,  has  written,  was  the 
first,  and  for  some  time  the  only,  manifestation  of  that 
spirit  of  national  solidarity  which  during  the  war  had 
been  preached  by  President  Wilson  in  his  famous 
messages.  This  distinguished  Austrian  reveals  the 
gratitude  of  his  people  in  the  following  words: 

''This  work  of  international  charity  has  saved  the 
lives  of  thousands  of  babies  in  Vienna.  It  has,  through 
the  organization  of  the  Society  of  Friends  of  England, 
healed  innumerable  mothers.  It  has,  by  the  energy  and 
humanity  of  Mr.  Hoover  and  his  compatriots,  nourished 
for  more  than  two  years  hundreds  of  thousands  of  chil- 
dren in  the  schools  of  Vienna  and  industrial  centers. 
It  has  lavished  on  us  inestimable  consolations,  because 
not  only  have  we  benefited  by  such  magnificent  charity, 
but  all  humanity  itself,  crushed  by  this  terrible  war, 
has  obtained  moral  profit  from  it.  It  is,  therefore, 
the  sacred  duty  of  an  Austrian  to  celebrate  with  all  his 

247 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

heart  such  a  manifestation  of  brotherhood.  Never- 
theless, the  misery  of  the  masses,  and  still  more  of  the 
middle  classes,  which  still  continues  in  spite  of  all  this 
charity  should  not  be  misunderstood.  It  is  not  the  result 
of  a  temporary  situation  or  the  passing  incapacity  of  a 
people  unable  to  re-establish  themselves.  On  the  con- 
trary, the  material  and  moral  causes  are  too  powerful 
to  be  conquered  by  an  enfeebled  and  stricken  people. " 


II 

When  I  went  to  the  city  of  Vienna,  after  a  long  and 
dreadful  journey  from  Trieste,  the  train  in  which  I 
traveled  was  crowded  with  men  and  women  who  seemed 
desperately  anxious  to  reach  that  city,  and  I  wondered 
then,  and  wonder  now,  what  evil  spell  enticed  them  that 
way.  For  Vienna  had  no  room  for  them,  no  food  for 
them  except  at  monstrous  prices,  no  fuel,  no  trade,  and 
no  hope  for  any  of  them,  if  they  were  of  Austrian  race. 
Yet  every  day  I  stayed  there  more  people  were  crowd- 
ing into  the  city  and  not  leaving  it,  owing  to  some  freak 
of  psychology  at  which  I  could  only  guess — a  desire 
for  a  mad  kind  of  gayety  in  their  world  of  ruin,  a  herd- 
ing together  of  doomed  people,  the  old  spirit  which  in 
times  of  plague  made  men  "eat,  drink,  and  be  merry; 
for  to-morrow  we  die."  There  were  others  who  came 
as  vultures  follow  the  trail  of  death  and  feed  upon  the 
corpses.  They  were  human  vultures  growing  fat  on 
the  disease  of  a  nation  by  financial  jugglings  and  com- 
mercial adventures  in  bankrupt  stock.  They  were 
rich  enemies  of  Austria,  once  within  her  empire,  now 
getting  the  value  of  the  foreign  exchange  which  made 
their  money  worth  ten  times  or  fifty  times  as  much  as 
the  Austrian  paper  money.  They  were  the  profiteers 
of  her  own  people,  who  even  in  the  general  ruin  had 
managed  to  loot  fortunes,  so  that  they  could  fling  about 

248 


THE  WARNING  OF  AUSTRIA 

these  paper  notes  from  vast  stocks  of  paper  with  reck- 
less hands.  So  every  hotel  in  a  city  of  hotels  was 
crowded  with  people  sleeping  on  sofas,  in  bathrooms 
and  drawing-rooms — anywhere  for  shelter. 

On  the  night  of  my  arrival  I  hired  a  cab  with  two 
horses  driven  by  a  man  who  had  the  skill  and  passion 
of  a  Roman  charioteer.  At  a  furious  gallop  through 
a  wet  darkness  he  took  me  to  many  hotels  in  different 
parts  of  the  city,  laughed  heartily  when  I  was  refused 
admittance  time  and  time  again,  and  shook  hands  like 
a  friend  and  a  brother  when  by  a  wild  stroke  of  luck 
I  managed  to  struggle  into  a  small  hotel  owing  to  the 
favor  of  an  Austrian  waiter  who  had  fond  memories 
of  Leicester  Square.  I  paid  my  driver  what  I  thought 
was  three  times  his  proper  fare,  but  he  scrunched  up 
the  notes  and  said:  "I  have  to  live!  This  would 
not  buy  me  a  packet  of  cigarettes!"  In  the  end  I 
gave  him  a  hundred  kronen  and  thought  I  had  been 
robbed,  but  one  day  in  Vienna  was  enough  to  teach  me 
that  this  sum  would  hardly  buy  a  meal  in  any  modest 
restaurant. 

On  that  first  night  in  Vienna  a  dreadful  gloom,  spiritual 
as  well  as  physical,  encompassed  me  when  I  went  out 
into  the  streets  for  an  evening  walk — those  streets 
which  I  remembered  as  so  full  of  light  and  gayety  and 
music  before  the  war.  Only  a  few  lights  glimmered. 
The  great  arc  lamps  were  not  burning.  No  gleam  came 
through  the  shuttered  windows.  At  six  o'clock  all 
the  shops  were  closed,  and  there  were  not  many  people 
about  in  the  darkness.  They  passed  me  like  ghosts,  and 
I  saw  through  the  gloom  pale,  haggard  faces  of  men 
and  women  who  shivered  as  they  walked.  Children 
with  bare  feet  padded  past  on  the  wet  pavements.  One 
woman  with  a  baby  in  her  arms  stopped  before  me  and 
held  out  a  skinny,  clawlike  hand  and  begged  for  money. 
Truly,  I  thought,  I  have  come  to  a  city  of  tragedy. 
17  249 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

After  other  nights  in  Vienna  I  knew  that  it  was  indeed 
a  city  of  tragedy,  more  tragic  than  any  other  city  I 
have  seen  in  the  world  after  the  years  of  war,  filled  with 
masses  of  people,  semistarved  or  three-quarters  starved, 
with  rickety  children  so  wizened  and  weak  that  they 
looked  like  little  monkeys  after  six  months  or  more  of 
life,  with  diseased  mothers  unable  to  feed  them  at  the 
breast,  with  men  of  good  education  and  good  birth 
starving  slowly  but  very  surely  on  a  diet  of  cabbage 
soup,  with  beautiful  girls  selling  their  beauty  for  one 
night's  meal,  and  middle-class  women  watching  their 
children  wither  and  die,  and  a  hopeless  misery  among 
these  millions  in  the  back  streets  of  that  great  and  splen- 
did city,  with  its  palaces,  its  picture  galleries,  its  glorious 
gardens,  its  noble  architecture  of  banks  and  offices 
and  mansions. 

Yet  here  were  strange,  bewildering  contrasts  between 
reckless  luxury  and  starving  poverty,  between  gayety  and 
despair,  which  deceived  many  observers  who  saw  only 
one  side,  or  could  not  reconcile  both  sides  with  any 
reason.  Night  after  night,  after  exploring  the  back 
streets  and  the  places  of  malady,  the  hospitals  and 
babies'  creches,  the  feeding  centers  of  charity,  I  used 
to  push  through  the  swing  doors  of  some  restaurant 
or  concert  hall  and  sit  there  to  watch  the  crowd  and  listen 
to  the  music  and  find  some  clue  to  the  riddle  of  things. 

These  places  were  always  crowded,  and  the  crowd 
was  always  made  up  of  the  same  types.  There  were 
great  numbers  of  prosperous-looking  men  who  seemed 
to  have  ilhmitable  supplies  of  paper  money.  Some  of 
them  were  Italians,  some  of  them  Greeks,  Czechs,  Serb- 
ians, Hungarians,  and  Jews.  Many  of  them  were 
Jews  of  no  certain  nationality  and  speaking  every  kind 
of  language.  Here  and  there  were  Austrian  families, 
sitting  here  for  the  light  and  warmth,  and  lingering  for 
a  long  time  over  cups  of  coffee  and  glasses  of  cold  water, 

250 


THE  WARNING  OF  AUSTRIA 

while  the  band  played  piece  after  piece  with  a  brilliant 
gayety  which  seemed  to  pretend  that  life  is  very  merry, 
free  from  care,  full  of  sunshine,  beauty,  laughter,  love. 

There  was  plenty  of  love  in  these  places,  but  not  of  a 
kind  good  to  see  on  the  whole.     Now  and  then  my  eyes 
were  taken  by  young  Austrian  couples,  who  sat  hand  in 
hand  or  with  their  faces  very  close  together  and  their 
eyes  Hghted  by  each  other's  light,  and  I  thought  they 
were  pitiful  to  see,  yet  beautiful,  like  lovers  shipwrecked 
on  a  desert  place,  with  death  about  them  and  drawing 
near,  so  that  perhaps  this  love  was  all  they  had,  and 
enough.     But  mostly   the  lovemaking  was  bought  by 
the  prosperous-looking  men,  who  were  giving  wine  and 
cake  to  girls  who,   I   guessed,  had   had   no  sohd   food 
that  day  and  were  paying  for  it  by  laughter  and  flirta- 
tion  and   the   open   marketing   of  their  youth.     They 
seemed  nice  girls,  as  good  as  your  sisters  or  mine,  of 
middle  class,   of  decent   upbringing,   but  now  citizens 
of  Vienna,  which  is   starving,  victims  of  a  hfe  where 
death  is  on  the  prowl,  and  a  creeping  disease  of  weakness, 
and  where  hunger  is  a  familiar  and  frightening  thing. 
Here  in  these  places  of  luxury  there  was  the  glitter  of 
Hght  and  warmth,  at  least  of  human  breath  and  bodies, 
and  the  splendor  of  marble  halls  and  the  blare  of  jazz 
bands  and  fancy  cakes  for  those  whose  purses  bulged 
with  paper  money.     Such  a  chatter!     Such  ripples  of 
laughter!     Such  a  joyous  rhythm  in  the  music  of  the 
band!     But  I  thought  of  the  hours,  of  the  days,  I  had 
spent  am.ong  rickety  children,  scrofulous  children,  and 
children  who  are  saved   from  the  hunger  death  only 
by  the  charity  of  their  former  enemies.     I  thought  of 
words  spoken  to  me  by  one  of  the  men  who  know  best 
the  conditions  of  their  country: 

"Unless  the  powers  formulate  some  policy — on  a 
broader  line  than  free  meals  and  temporary  aid — 
the  Austrian  people  are  doomed  beyond  any  hope  of 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

life,  and  there  will  be  a  morbid  poison  in  the  heart  of 
Europe." 

Those  laughing  people  around  me — how  could  they 
laugh  and  listen  to  light  music  and  spend  those  kronen 
like  counters  in  a  game  ?  Some  of  them  were  living  on 
the  last  of  their  capital.  Others  were  parasites  of 
profiteers.  Others  preferred  laughter  to  tears,  and 
came  to  listen  to  this  gay  music  for  forgetfulness.  They 
were  like  the  people  in  Boccaccio's  novels  who,  with 
plague  raging  around  them,  gathered  together  and 
told  amorous,  wicked  tales  and  wondered  idly  when 
death  would  touch  them  on  the  shoulder.  Was  Austria 
alone  hke  that?  Were  there  not  many  countries  of 
Europe,  perhaps  even  England — so  rich  and  fat,  as  she 
was  called  until  the  unrealities  of  her  arithmetic  were 
put  to  the  cruel  test  of  truth — who  were  playing  at  the 
gay  old  game  of  life  carelessly  while  outside  disease 
crept  nearer — ^the  European  malady  which  must  be 
cured  quickly  lest  we  die  ? 

HI 

Profiteering  was  shameless  in  Vienna  during  the  war, 
and  there  were  still  millionaires — in  paper  money — ^who 
were  able  to  afford  the  necessities  and  even  the  luxuries 
of  life  in  spite  of  the  wild  insanity  of  the  prices  charged. 
It  was  they  and  the  foreigners  and  middle-class  folk 
who  had  saved  up  money  who  entirely  ignored  the 
market  prices  controlled  by  the  government — theoret- 
ically— and  adopted  a  system  of  smuggling — Schleich- 
handlung  as  it  is  called — so  open  and  unabashed  that  it 
was  a  mockery  of  its  name.  The  rich  folk  hired  their 
smugglers.  The  middle-class  folk  did  their  own  job, 
and  on  several  days  a  week  the  tramcars  going  out  to 
the  market  gardens  and  small  farms  in  the  country  out- 
side the  city  were  crowded  with  young  men  who  had 

252 


THE  WARNING  OF  AUSTRIA 

gone  to  buy  their  week's  supplies  direct  from  the  peas- 
ants. Those  country  folk  demanded  more  and  more 
paper  money  for  their  eggs  and  butter  and  bacon  and 
vegetables.  In  some  districts  they  would  not  deHver 
their  goods  for  any  price  in  paper,  but  insisted  upon  a 
system  of  barter  by  which  in  return  for  food  they  got 
tobacco,  boots,  clothes,  and  manufactured  articles. 

I  know  the  case  of  a  man  who  went  to  one  of  these 
peasants  to  buy  food  for  his  wedding.  He  wore  a  new 
jacket  which  he  had  saved  for  his  wedding  day. 

The  peasant  farmer  refused  his  paper  money,  made 
an  ugly  grimace  at  it,  and  said:  "That  filth  is  no  good 
to  me.     I  will  give  you  a  sucking  pig  for  that  jacket.'* 

The  bargain  was  made,  and  the  bridegroom  went 
home  in  his  shirt  sleeves  with  his  wedding  feast  under 
his  arm. 

The  peasant's  point  of  view  is  more  apparent  when  I 
say  that  a  cheap  suit  of  clothes  in  Vienna  cost  four 
thousand  kronen  when  I  was  in  that  city.  After  that 
prices  steadily  mounted  in  paper  values,  and  price  of 
meat  and  fat  had  risen  by  a  third  and  even  a  half,  so 
that  one  pound  of  lard  cost,  nominally,  five  pounds,  or 
twenty-five  dollars  in  American  money,  with  exchange 
at  the  normal  rate,  at  the  end  of  last  year.  The  peas- 
ants raised  the  price  of  flour  to  such  an  extent  that  it 
was  beyond  the  reach  of  all  but  the  robber  profiteers — 
those  gangs  of  financial  harpies  who  still,  by  juggling 
with  the  money  market  and  gambling  in  the  rise  and 
fall  of  Austrian  securities,  contrived  to  amass  vast 
stocks  of  paper  currency.  It  was  they  and  the  foreign- 
ers crowding  into  the  city  who  spent  five  hundred  kronen 
for  a  single  person  at  dinner,  and  five  times  that  amount 
if  they  indulged  in  expensive  wines.  The  cost  of  a 
dinner  followed  by  a  dance,  given  by  an  American  and 
his  wife  to  members  of  Viennese  society  at  the  Hotel 
Bristol  was  more  than  a  million  kronen,  worth  forty-two 

253 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

thousand  pounds  in  English  money,  according  to  the 
prewar  value  of  Austrian  kronen. 

It  will  be  said  by  my  readers:  "But,  after  all,  that 
means  very  little,  because  the  money  is  turned  out  of 
the  printing  presses  and  has  hardly  any  real  value." 

That  is  true  for  those  who  can  get  hold  of  the  print- 
ing press,  as  it  were,  but  it  is  not  true  in  the  case  of 
the  struggling  middle-class  folk — clerks,  schoolmasters, 
doctors,  university  professors,  workingwomen  with  little 
homes  and  hungry  babes,  and  the  whole  class  of 
laboring  men.  They  do  not  get  unlimited  supplies 
of  this  paper.  I  asked  a  young  clerk  in  a  newspaper 
ojBice  how  much  he  was  paid  a  week,  and  he  told  me  a 
hundred  and  sixty  kronen.  I  remembered  that  it  had 
cost  me  more  than  a  hundred  kronen  to  get  a  meal  of 
three  thin  courses  which  left  me  hungry. 

"How  do  you  live?"  I  asked. 

"I  don't,"  he  said. 

In  a  babies'  clinic  filled  with  haggard,  anaemic  women 
who  had  brought  their  terrible  little  babes,  all  scrofu- 
lous and  boneless,  for  medical  examination,  I  spoke  to 
a  young  Austrian  doctor,  and  he  told  me  very  frankly 
that  his  own  case  was  hopeless. 

"I  get  under  two  hundred  kronen  a  week,"  he  said, 
"and  for  three  years  I  have  lived  mostly  on  cabbage 
soup,  with  now  and  then  potatoes  for  a  treat.  Not  in 
all  this  time  have  I  eaten  meat.  These  clothes  I  wear 
date  from  before  the  war.  You  see  they  have  been 
turned.  When  they  wear  out  and  fall  away  from  me 
I  shall  be  like  old  Adam,  for  how  can  I  buy  a  new  suit.? 
My  case  is  no  worse  than  thousands  of  others.  It  is 
beggary  and  starvation." 

In  the  great  hospitals  of  Vienna,  the  best  medical 
schools  in  the  world  before  the  w^ar  by  universal  repu- 
tation, it  became  almost  impossible  to  carry  on  the  work, 
owing  to  the  dearth  of  supplies.     Fuel  was  their  great 

254 


THE  WARNING  OF  AUSTRIA 

need,  and  many  of  the  wards  closed  down  because  they 
could  not  be  heated  at  all,  and  the  patients  were  crowded 
together  for  warmth's  sake  in  spite  of  the  dangers  of 
bad  ventilation.  Coal  was  almost  out  of  the  question, 
and  wood  was  gathered  from  the  neighboring  country- 
side as  much  as  possible.  It  was  the  only  source  of 
fuel  for  poor  folk,  and  one  of  the  sights  of  Vienna  was 
the  crowd  of  wood  gatherers  coming  back  laden  with 
logs  and  branches  under  which  children  and  women 
staggered  to  their  hearthsides. 


IV 

In  the  midst  of  all  this  misery,  and  of  the  false,  mad 
gayety  which  mocks  at  it,  the  relief  committees,  American 
and  British,  the  Society  of  Friends,  and  other  charitable 
agencies  bring  some  light  and  joy  by  the  enormous 
rescue  work  they  continue  to  do  among  the  children 
and  nursing  mothers.  The  network  of  this  organiza- 
tion is  on  a  wide-reaching  scale,  and  one  of  the  most 
moving  and  pathetic  sights  that  have  ever  met  my  eyes 
was  when  I  went  to  the  old  palace  of  the  Archduke 
Franz  Ferdinand,  whose  death  was  the  straw  which  set 
Europe  alight,  and  watched  the  feeding  of  more  than  a 
thousand  children  under  the  direction  of  an  American 
officer  and  his  assistants. 

I  talked  with  many  of  the  little  ones  as  they  bent 
over  the  bowls  of  soup  and  offered  up  a  grace  to  God 
before  their  first  spoonful.  For  many  of  them  it  was 
the  first  meal  of  the  day,  and  for  some  the  only  meal. 
They  were  grateful  for  it,  with  the  smiling  gratitude  of 
children  who  were  born  to  suffering  as  a  usual,  common 
thing.  But  in  spite  of  all  this  international  work  of 
charity,  the  large  sums  of  money  poured  into  Vienna 
from  many  countries,  there  is  still  a  large  population 
there  which  is  not  touched  by  the  work  of  rescue.     The 

255 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

grown-up  folk  do  not  get  free  meals.  Genteel  poverty 
in  Vienna  is  unaided.  The  workingmen  in  the  factories 
do  not  get  enough  raw  material  any  more  for  their  own 
bodies  than  for  the  machines  they  mind.  Both  are  un- 
dernourished. In  the  National  Assembly  the  Social 
Democrats  and  Christian  Socialists  have  vied  with  each 
other  in  the  fierceness  of  their  denunciations  of  the 
rationed  bread  which  is  baked  with  a  fifty-per-cent 
ingredient  of  uneatable  maize  flour  producing  horrible 
eff"ects  upon  the  bodies  of  those  who  eat  it.  In  Decem- 
ber last  many  railway  men  and  other  workers  went  on 
strike  as  a  protest  against  this  filthy  food,  and  the  Social 
Democrats  announced  to  the  Assembly  that  they  found 
it  hard  to  calm  the  workmen  in  the  factories,  bitter 
and  despairing  because  of  their  hunger,  for  hunger  is 
the  food  of  revolution. 

The  conditions  I  have  described  still  prevail. 

Intellectually  as  well  as  physically  the  people  of 
Vienna  are  at  least  half  starved.  The  university  cannot 
afford  to  buy  foreign  books,  the  science  men  cannot 
keep  abreast  with  modern  research  for  the  same  reason. 
Even  in  the  elementary  schools  teaching  suff'ers  because 
both  teachers  and  scholars  are  listless  with  weakness  at 
their  work.  So  in  all  departments  of  life  in  Vienna 
one  sees  a  devitalizing  process,  a  slow  death  of  all  na- 
tional and  individual  energies,  a  creeping  paralysis  in 
the  social  body. 

Yet  so  cruel  is  the  extent  to  which  national  egotism 
and  intensification  of  selfishness  and  cynicism  have  been 
developed  since  the  war  by  a  failure  to  reshape  the  society 
of  nations  on  more  ideal  lines  that  the  neighbors  of 
Austria,  and  even  her  own  peasants,  are  abominably 
callous  to  that  agony  in  Vienna.  Jugo-Slavia  and 
Czecho-Slovakia,  once  of  the  Austrian  Empire,  and 
now  republican  states,  will  not  forgive  Vienna  for  her 

old  political  domination  and  tyranny,  and  will  not  lift 

256 


THE  WARNING  OF  AUSTRIA 

a  hand  to  rescue  the  Viennese.  The  Czechs,  with 
those  old  memories  still  rankling,  deal  contemptuously 
and  tyrannically  with  the  German  minorities  in  their 
midst,  and  make  it  a  crime  for  them  to  use  their  own 
language  in  the  streets  and  public  places  of  towns 
where  they  form  a  great  part  of  the  population.  There 
is  no  hope  for  Vienna  nor — carrying  the  argument  over 
to  other  countries — for  Europe  itself,  if  that  national 
and  racial  enmity  is  maintained. 

This  state  of  things  in  Austria  ought  to  be  a  tremen- 
dous warning  to  all  Europeans.  What  is  happening  in 
Vienna  so  acutely — all  those  symptoms  of  disease — 
will  become  apparent  in  many  other  countries  of  Europe 
unless  there  is  a  speedy  cure.  These  symptoms  of  social 
plague  are  the  inflation  of  paper  money,  which  is  a  mere 
sham  covering  the  lack  of  real  values;  the  difficulty  of 
procuring  raw  material  from  more  prosperous  countries 
owing  to  the  difference  in  exchange;  the  gradual  weaken- 
ing of  the  individual  worker  and  of  the  nation  as  a 
whole  in  physical  well-being  and  moral  will  power; 
the  debility  of  children,  working  mothers  and  laboring 
men,  so  that  the  future  of  the  race  is  endangered  and 
the  birth  rate  is  lowered,  while  the  death  rate  goes  up; 
a  spiritual  carelessness  as  to  these  evil  conditions  so 
that  they  come  to  be  accepted  as  inevitable,  and  a  levity 
of  the  social  mind  among  those  who  still  have  money  to 
spend,  which  disregards  the  necessity  of  urgent  action, 
desperate  remedies,  in  order  to  maintain  the  old  stand- 
ards of  civilization. 

It  is  difficult  for  ordinary  minds  to  think  in  terms  of 
Europe  or  beyond  the  frontiers  of  nationality;  but  if 
one  studies  the  health  chart  of  Europe  as  a  whole  one 
will  find  very  clearly  a  spreading  blackness  correspond- 
ing to  the  areas  constantly  enlarging  and  embracing 
new  peoples,  in  which  there  is  economic  disease  and  what 
I  may  call  the  withering  of  civilized  hfe.     The  whole 

257 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

of  Russia  is  in  this  condition,  as  far  as  we  can  get  scien- 
tific evidence,  owing  to  the  break-up  of  its  poHtical 
machine  and  economic  machine,  bad  as  they  were, 
followed  by  the  wearing  out  of  transport  material  and 
the  lowering  of  production  both  in  agriculture  and  in  in- 
dustry— all  this  due  more  to  the  exhaustion  and  effort  of 
war  than  to  the  methods  of  the  Bolshevik  regime.  It 
is  certain  that  Russia  is  dropping  not  so  much  into 
barbarism  as  into  a  material  and  spiritual  decadence, 
so  that  all  the  impulses  toward  a  higher  type  of  civiliza- 
tion are  for  a  time  at  least  deadened.  Its  people  are 
fighting  with  hunger,  fighting  with  disease,  fighting  for 
the  barest  necessities  of  life,  and  not  for  beauty,  art  and 
luxury  and  joy,  in  which  civilization  comes  to  flower. 

The  Russian  disease  is  reaching  out  to  neighboring 
states  like  Esthonia  and  Lithuania.  They,  too,  are 
withering  from  the  same  causes — lack  of  abundant  food, 
devitalizing  of  labor,  physical  disease,  general  debility. 
Poland  is  a  strong  soul  with  a  stricken  body. 

Is  this  plague  creeping  westward.?  Is  there  any 
certainty  that  it  will  stop  at  the  frontiers  of  Germany  ? 
Austria  is  engulfed  already,  as  I  have  shown,  and 
there  are  signs  that  in  spite  of  German  efforts  to  get 
back  to  the  old  standards  of  work,  the  enormous  energy 
and  profit  of  the  big  trusts  to  recapture  old  markets, 
her  people  are  sickening. 

Already  at  the  end  of  last  year  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  children  in  Germany  were  suffering  from  malnutri- 
tion, and  not  only  the  children,  but  workingmen. 
Seven  hundred  thousand  children  and  mothers  were 
being  fed  on  charity,  and  everywhere  in  the  big  cities 
the  shadow  of  starvation,  if  not  actual  hunger  in  its 
acute  and  terrible  stage,  was  creeping  over  the  country. 

So  far,  Austria,  whose  condition  I  have  described  at 
length,  is  the  worst  case  of  national  decay,  and  all 
students  of  humanity  and  of  social  history  must  take 

258 


THE  WARNING  OF  AUSTRIA 

it  as  the  outstanding  example  of  tragedy,  due  not  to 
inherent  weakness,  but  to  the  evil  structure  of  inter- 
national relations.  There  is  only  one  hope  of  rescue  for 
Austria,  and  that  is  the  breaking  down  of  the  hatred 
round  her,  the  opening  of  trade  relationships  with  her 
neighbors,  a  give-and-take  in  the  matter  of  raw  material, 
labor  and  commercial  credit,  co-operation  instead  of 
isolation  and  rivalry,  Christian  fellowship  for  mutual 
help  and  protection,  instead  of  the  cutthroat  code  of 
the  old  tribal  laws.  And  that,  in  my  humble  judgment, 
is  the  one  hope  of  rescue  not  only  for  Austria,  but  for 
Europe  as  a  whole. 


VIII 

THE   TRUTH  ABOUT   IRELAND 


TO  England  as  well  as  to  Ireland  friendship  between 
our  two  peoples  is  utterly  necessary  for  the  sake  of 
liberty,  progress,  honor,  and  peace  of  mind.  The 
self-government  of  the  Irish  people  is  essential  to  the 
liberties  of  the  English  people,  because  until  that  is 
obtained  we  who  are  English  or  Scottish  will  never 
be  free  from  a  political  conflict  within  our  own  island 
which  cuts  across  every  party  issue,  obscures  our  own 
domestic  interests,  and  gives  passionate  war  cries  on 
one  side  or  the  other,  to  politicians  who  prefer  passion 
as  a  bait  for  votes  rather  than  intellectual  argument. 

But  England  needs  peace  with  Ireland  for  higher 
reasons  than  that.  She  needs  it  to  regain  her  moral 
character  in  the  judgment  of  foreign  nations  and  of  her 
own  people  in  the  far  dominions;  she  needs  it  for  her 
own  soul's  sake. 

The  Irish  tragedy  poisoned  the  mind  of  the  world 
against  us,  and  the  wells  of  our  own  faith.  It  convicted 
us  against  our  will,  against  our  own  sense  of  truth  and 
honor,  against  the  noblest  and  most  generous  instincts 
of  the  best  among  us,  of  most  damnable  hypocrisy. 
•Justly  or  unjustly,  by  truth  or  by  lies — I  will  tell 
what  I  think  is  the  truth — ^the  Irish  people  were  able 
to  charge  us  with  that  vice  and  bring  down  upon  us 
the  scorn  or  wrath  of  all  our  enemies  (and  we  have  many), 
while  arousing  suspicion  or  surprise  among  our  few  best 

260 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

friends.  During  the  war  we  had  proclaimed  high 
ideals  for  humanity,  and  hundreds  of  thousands  of  our 
men  died,  as  many  of  them  thought,  to  make  them 
prevail.  It  was,  we  said,  a  spiritual  fight  against 
the  brute  force  of  militarism.  It  was  a  war  against 
Prussianism  in  all  its  forms.  Afterward,  when  peace 
should  come,  we  would  demand  the  self-determination 
of  oppressed  nations,  we  should  protect  the  right  of  the 
little  peoples,  we  should  establish  a  reign  of  liberty 
within  a  League  of  Nations  governed  by  an  international 
court  of  justice  administering  a  new  code  of  world- 
wide peace.  Into  these  high  sentiments,  expressed 
fervently  by  English  idealists,  came  inevitably  at 
pubhc  meetings  one  sharp  interjection — "What  about 
Ireland?"  That  question  was  what  a  friend  of  mine 
calls  a  "conversation  stopper."  At  best  it  would  make 
the  most  fluent  speaker  pause  a  moment  in  his  rush  of 
oratory. 

Yes,  after  all,  what  about  Ireland?  We  had  estab- 
lished martial  law  there  of  a  kind  never  known  even  in 
Austria  or  Russia  on  such  a  scale  in  proportion  to  popu- 
lation, v/ith  tanks,  armored  cars,  machine  guns,  air- 
planes, all  the  equipment  of  modern  warfare,  after 
"the  war  to  end  war."  Justly  or  unjustly,  we  had  at 
least  adopted  Prussian  methods,  after  killing  Prussian 
militarism.  In  Ireland,  rightly  or  wrongly,  we  had 
abandoned  the  ideal  of  self-determination.  And  plead- 
ing abominable  provocation,  the  essential  justice  of 
checking  a  murder  campaign,  the  right  to  repress 
rebellion  against  the  Crown,  we  were  allowing  our 
military  and  police  forces  to  adopt  the  old  primitive 
law  of  an  eye  for  an  eye,  a  tooth  for  a  tooth,  without  any 
reference  at  all  to  other  laws  of  a  more  recent  and  more 
civilized  kind. 

All  civil  law  was  abolished  in  Ireland,  at  a  time  when 

English  idealists  were  pleading  for  its  extension  to  inter- 

261 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

national  affairs  as  a  nobler  method  of  argument  than 
that  of  war.  In  Ireland  trial  by  jury  had  been  replaced 
by  courts-martial,  in  which  the  accused  were  often 
the  judges.  Inquests  on  the  bodies  of  murdered  civilians 
had  been  replaced  by  military  inquiries  in  which  no 
evidence  was  admitted  if  distasteful  to  the  court.  Any 
Irish  man  or  woman  could  be  arrested  without  a  charge 
and  imprisoned  without  trial,  and  thousands  of  them 
were  thus  arrested  and  imprisoned.  Though  Ministers 
of  the  Crown  referred  to  the  strife  in  Ireland  as  "war," 
we  shot  or  hanged  our  prisoners  if  taken  with  arms  in 
their  hands,  and  though  for  many  months  the  same 
Ministers  denied  that  our  soldiers  and  police  took  re- 
venge for  their  own  losses  by  "reprisals"  against  Irish 
people  and  property,  that  system  of  meeting  terror  by 
counter-terror  was  afterward  admitted  and  made 
official.  When,  therefore,  our  Prime  Minister  and  his 
colleagues,  or  any  other  public  or  private  person,  spoke 
of  the  spiritual  hopes  of  the  world,  the  right  of  majori- 
ties to  the  liberty  of  self-government,  the  duty  of  France 
to  demobihze  her  armies  and  her  hatreds,  the  justice 
of  the  punishment  inflicted  upon  Austria  for  her  former 
tyrannies  against  subject  peoples,  or  the  cruelties  of 
Germany  in  Belgium,  that  cry  of,  "What  about  Ire- 
land?" came  as  a  confusing  and  conscience-pricking 
interruption. 

For  it  is  not  in  the  English  character  to  be  insensitive 
to  criticism  or  satire  so  poignant  as  that.  If  we  are 
hypocritical  as  a  people,  it  is  not  through  insincerity, 
but  through  stupidity  or  ignorance,  or  particular  preju- 
dice. We  do  not  and  cannot,  as  a  nation,  ride  rough- 
shod over  justice,  or  hberty,  or  fair  play,  without  stir- 
rings of  conscience  that  hurt  horribly.  Not  deliberately, 
or  without  an  immense  amount  of  argument  in  self- 
justification,  can  we,  as  a  people,  accept  a  policy  of 
l^rutality  or  tyranny.    There  is  an  inexhaustible  store 

262 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

of  generous  feeling  among  English  folk,  amounting 
almost  to  weakness,  in  regard  to  smaller  people  than 
themselves,  to  all  helpless  and  little  things,  to  all  under 
dogs.  That  generosity  can  only  be  overwhelmed  by  a 
wave  of  passion,  or  blinded  by  ignorance  that  tyranny 
is  at  work  or  injustice  established.  This  Irish  tragedy, 
therefore,  has  been  England's  tragedy  as  well,  for  it 
tortured  many  minds  among  us,  and  was  bitterly  re- 
sented by  those  who  desired  to  crush  the  rebellion  by 
all  ways  of  force,  as  well  as  by  those  who  detested  the 
methods  and  morals  of  military  repression,  because 
the  very  name  of  Ireland  laid  us  open  to  attack,  put 
disgrace  upon  us,  challenged  our  honor  and  our  decent 
reputation  in  the  world.  The  Irish  made  use  of  that 
weapon,  more  powerful  against  our  prestige  than  the 
revolvers  of  their  "gunmen."  They  knew  that  we 
were  vulnerable  to  that  form  of  attack,  because,  what- 
ever our  faults  may  be,  we  stand  or  fall  in  the  world  by 
our  reputation  for  justice,  and  not  by  the  power  of 
guns.  So  Ireland  felt  sure  of  winning  most  of  what  she 
wanted  if  she  could  put  us  in  the  wrong,  and  our  poli- 
ticians gave  them  a  thousand  chances. 

Irish  propaganda  —  hke  all  propaganda  one-sided 
and  not  careful  of  exact  truth — was  wonderfully  organ- 
ized and  far  reaching.  It  found  its  way,  day  after 
day,  month  after  month,  into  the  newspapers  of  Amer- 
ica, France  (when  France  was  annoyed  with  us),  Italy, 
Russia,  Poland,  and  all  our  own  dominions,  where  its 
accounts  of  raids  and  imprisonings,  shootings,  hangings, 
and  burnings  stirred  the  deepest  emotion  of  people 
who  had  Irish  blood  in  their  veins,  or  a  sense  of  chivalry 
and  indignation  among  others.  The  darker,  murderous 
side  of  Sinn  Fein  outrages  were  but  lightly  touched,  and 
the  Irish  picture  presented  to  the  world  through  its 
hterary  agents  was  the  simple  and  stirring  spectacle  of 
a  little  people  fighting  with  heroic  spirit  against  a  brutal 

263 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

and  obstinate  tyranny.  Such  friends  as  we  had  were 
disconcerted  and  mystified. 

Their  first  incredulity  was  overborne  by  apparent 
weight  of  evidence  and  by  repetition,  and  they  were 
aghast  at  the  reign  of  anarchy  which  England  had  made 
in  her  sister  island.  "How  is  it,"  they  asked,  "that 
the  English,  who  are  not  a  brutal  people,  whose  men  (as 
the  war  proved)  are  generally  kind-hearted,  even  to 
their  enemies,  who  for  centuries  have  led  the  way  to 
civil  progress  in  Europe,  should  lose  their  moral  qualities 
and  betray  their  best  ideals  in  the  case  of  Ireland.'' 
We  cannot  understand!" 

So  spoke  our  friends  in  America,  in  France,  and  in 
other  countries,  as  I  knew  by  letters  I  received.  Even 
the  French  people,  who  are  not  soft  in  putting  down 
rebellion,  who  are  not  tolerant  of  political  revolt,  were 
scandalized  by  the  English  treatment  of  Ireland.  From 
one  Frenchman  who  served  with  our  armies  in  the  war 
on  the  western  front,  I  had  a  letter  in  which  he  ex- 
plained his  perplexity  about  Ireland  and  added  a  post- 
script in  which  he  summed  up  his  indignation  in  one 
savage  little  sentence," Your  government  disgusts  us!" 

If  our  friends  talked  like  that,  what  of  our  enemies? 
They  found  this  Irish  business  to  their  liking.  It 
provided  them  with  one  more  proof  of  the  incurable 
abomination  of  England.  "John  Bull,"  they  said, 
"always  was  and  always  will  be  a  hypocrite  and  a  bully. 
For  centuries  he  has  prated  about  liberty  while  he  has 
thrust  his  fist  into  the  face  of  all  rivals,  trodden  down  the 
native  races  of  his  colonial  and  captured  territories, 
increased  and  held  his  empire  by  brute  force,  exercised 
the  most  cynical  diplomatic  policy,  and  done  all  things 
in  the  names  of  righteousness  and  God.  His  present 
terrorism  in  Ireland  is  only  one  more  proof  of  his  tradi- 
tional brutality,  and  does  not  surprise  us  in  the  least." 
That,  in  a  mild  way,  was  the  verdict  of  England's 

•264 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

enemies  in  every  part  of  the  world  to  which  Irish  propa- 
ganda reached. 

It  reached  every  civilized  country  except  England. 
Owing  to  the  government  control  of  many  newspapers 
(bought  by  members  of  the  Coalition  to  stifle  criticism 
and  spread  political  propaganda  of  their  own),  and  on 
account  of  the  timidity  or  incredulity  or  dishonesty 
of  others  not  so  bought,  the  only  facts  published  in  the 
majority  of  English  newspapers  after  the  Irish  rebellion 
of  1916  were  those  provided  by  Dublin  Castle  or  the 
Front  Bench  in  the  House  of  Commons.  In  that  way 
there  was,  for  a  long  time,  an  almost  complete  boycott 
of  any  news  which  tended  to  discredit  our  officials  or 
armed  forces  in  Ireland,  while  on  the  other  hand  full 
pubhcity  was  given  to  all  Sinn  Fein  outrages  and  crimes. 
A  few  journals,  like  the  Daily  News,  the  Manchester 
Guardian,  and  The  Nation,  succeeded  in  breaking  through 
this  conspiracy  of  silence,  but  they  only  reached  a 
limited  public  and  were  under  suspicion  as  unpatriotic 
or  revolutionary  sheets  by  readers  who  think  that  all 
criticism  of  government  is  unpatriotic  and  that  all 
truth  which  disturbs  the  self-righteousness  of  the 
Enghsh  conservative  mind  is  revolutionary. 

The  Sinn  Fein  activists  of  the  "Irish  Republican 
Army,"  described  more  briefly  as  the  "Irish  gunmen," 
spoiled  the  beautiful  picture  of  a  heroic  people  fighting 
nobly  for  liberty's  sake,  by  acts  of  brutality  and  methods 
of  warfare  which  could  not  be  condoned  or  forgiven  by 
any  soul  alive  who  hated  cruelty  and  still  had  faith 
in  Christian  ethics.  These  acts  were  reported  to  the 
English  people  without  mention  of  reprisals  or  cruelties 
on  the  other  side,  or  with  absolute  denials  by  public 
officials  of  any  such  charge  against  themselves  and  their 
agents.  Only  by  rumors,  by  tales  told  privately,  in 
whispers,  by  seeing  smoke  and  suspecting  fire,  was  the 
average   Englishman   aware  of  any   dirty  work  which 

18  26s 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

might  smirch  our  honor  in  the  world.  That  was  so 
for  at  least  a  year  after  the  ending  of  the  war,  until 
admissions  were  made  in  the  House  of  Commons,  and 
facts  were  admitted  in  papers  like  the  Times,  which 
charged  our  Irish  administration  with  action  and  policy 
contrary — to  say  the  least — to  our  traditions  of  honor 
and  justice.  I  think  our  only  excuse  in  history,  as  a 
people,  for  permitting  the  dishonesty  and  villainy  of 
some  of  our  statesmen,  who  played  into^the  hands  of 
Sinn  Fein  by  adopting  evil  as  a  cure  for  evil,  is  our 
general  ignorance  of  what  was  happening,  and  the  wide, 
unbridgeable  gulf  that  lies  between  English  and  Irish 
mentality. 

II 

There  is,  of  course,  one  type  of  mind  in  England 
which  made  any  reasonable  settlement  of  Ireland  im- 
possible through  the  centuries,  and  will  make  it  impos- 
sible now  if  he  can.  He  is  actually  the  old  type  of  John 
Bull  Englishman,  hardly  exaggerated  by  his  carica- 
ture, but  utterly  unrepresentative  of  the  nation  as  a 
whole — hard  in  his  imperialism,  narrow  in  his  Protes- 
tantism, reactionary  against  any  effort  of  change  or 
progress,  sure  that  the  Englishman  of  his  own  type  is 
the  noblest  effort  of  God,  disliking  all  aliens,  including 
Irish,  Welsh,  and  Scotch,  and  a  firm  believer  in  ''reso- 
lute rule"  with  machine  guns  and  tanks  for  all  rebellious 
people,  such  as  native  races,  and  workingmen  who 
want  more  wages.  He  was  the  defender  of  the  Amritsar 
massacre.  He  is  all  for  shooting  down  the  unemployed 
if  they  make  themselves  annoying.  He  would  hke  to 
see  a  rounding  up  of  all  socialists,  labor  leaders,  and 
intellectual  theorists  who  are  endeavoring  to  change 
the  old  structure  of  English  life  with  its  Heaven-sent 
prerogatives  of  great  landed  estates  for  the  "good 
famihes, "    high    profits    for    the    capitalists,    and    low 

266 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

wages  for  the  working  class.  His  ideas  on  Ireland  are 
clear  and  sharp.  "The  Irish  people,"  he  says,  "are  just 
savages,  and  they  must  be  dealt  with  as  such.  Shoot 
'em  down  wholesale  if  they  won't  obey  English  law. 
Reprisals?  Certainly,  and  plenty  of  them.  More  power 
to  their  elbow!  as  Mr  Balfour  said.  Let  our  men  have 
a  free  hand  and  teach  'em  what's  what!  If  necessary, 
have  a  new  conquest  of  Ireland,  with  blood  and  fire, 
and  do  it  well  this  time.  The  best  thing  would  be  to 
sink  the  whole  damned  island." 

That  type  of  man  is  still  to  be  found  in  many  places 
and  classes  of  English  life,  and  it  was  his  type  which 
supported  Sir  Hamar  Greenwood  and  the  Prime  Minis- 
ter's Tory  masters  in  their  policy  of  reprisals  and  coun- 
ter-terror. He  is  to  be  found  in  sporting  clubs  down 
Pall  Mall  and  St.  James's  Street,  on  the  race  course  at 
Epsom,  in  the  crowd  that  goes  to  see  a  prize  fight,  in 
the  manor  house  of  a  country  squire,  often  in  the  rectory 
of  a  country  parish.  But  his  type — not  without  use  in 
its  time — is  old-fashioned  and  dwindling  away.  Even 
before  the  war  he  was  passing,  and  when  the  war  came 
his  dogmatic  opinions  were  heard  with  laughter  at 
mess  tables  where  young  officers  of  ours  who  had  been 
thinking  hard  about  many  problems  of  life  and  death, 
the  causes  of  the  war  and  the  hopes  of  the  world,  were 
not  taking  his  blusterings  as  the  last  word  in  the  way 
of  wisdom.  But  he  still  exists,  and  writes  letters  to 
the  Morning  Post,  which  is  published  exclusively  for 
his  class  and  ideas.  Throughout  the  Irish  trouble  he 
sat  solid  in  the  Coalition  Government,  fuming  and 
fretting  over  the  weakness  of  the  Prime  Minister  who 
was  always  tempted  to  compromise  with  the  forces 
of  disorder  and  hardly  restrained.  He  snorted  with 
laughter  when  Terence  McSwiney — with  mistaken  fa- 
naticism, perhaps,  but  with  no  ignoble  motive  and  a 
burning  love  for  Ireland  in  his  heart — died  in  his  hunger 

267 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

strike,  and  he  became  purple  in  the  face  with  rage  when 
the  pohcy  of  reprisals  was  challenged  by  Mr.  Asquith. 
It  was  his  belief  in  force — and  force  alone — as  a  means 
of  settlement  that  enabled  the  government  to  abandon 
statesmanship  in  all  their  dealings  with  Ireland,  and  to 
leave  it  to  the  devil. 

But  all  through  these  recent  years  that  type  of  mind 
has  been  a  small  minority,  though  powerful  in  its  com- 
mand of  the  political  machine.  It  did  not  represent 
the  great  body  of  moderate  EngHshmen  who  during  the 
years  of  this  tragedy  were  anxious  to  know  the  truth, 
but  could  not,  and  to  find  some  kind  of  reasonable 
solution  to  the  Irish  problem,  which  seemed  insoluble. 

This  average  Enghshman,  as  I  met  him  in  tramcars, 
teashops,  and  other  places  of  middle-class  circumstance, 
was  mightily  perplexed  about  the  whole  business,  and 
had  poor  sources  of  information.  He  did  not  under- 
stand the  Irish  temperament,  nor  see  any  way  out  of 
the  Irish  problem.  He  still  clung  to  old  sentiments 
and  old  illusions.  For  one  thing,  he  could  not  bring 
himself  to  believe  that  the  Irish  had  any  real  hatred, 
or  cause  of  hatred,  for  England  and  the  English.  He 
saw  no  adequate  reason  for  hatred,  and  argued  that  the 
Irish  with  whom  he  came  in  contact  in  London  or  else- 
where were  nice  people,  with  a  simple  faith  and  a  sense 
of  humor,  not  at  all  murderous  in  their  instincts.  He 
liked  most  of  their  men,  and  all  their  women,  as  far 
as  he  knew  them,  and  believed  firmly,  in  spite  of  all 
evidence  to  the  contrary,  that  Sinn  Fein  and  its  "wild 
m.en"  were  only  a  minority  of  extremists  who  did  not 
at  all  represent  the  great  body  of  Irish  people,  and  that, 
therefore,  their  violence  was  artificially  engineered,  and 
if  defeated  by  English  resolution  would  be  followed  by  a 
renewal  of  friendship  between  our  two  peoples,  provided 
Ireland  was  given  a  generous  measure  of  Home  Rule. 

It  was  only  after  Sinn  Fein  had  killed  many  police- 

^68 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

men  and  soldiers  that  be  began  to  tbink  tbat  tbere  were 
some  qualities  in  tbe  Irish  character  which  baffled  him. 
His  remembrance  of  old  novels  by  Charles  Lever, 
Samuel  Lover,  and  other  writers,  as  well  as  the  stage 
type  of  Irishman  traditional  for  a  long  time  in  England, 
still  held  his  imagination  with  the  figure  of  a  breezy, 
laughing,  devil-may-care,  romantic  soul  who  helped 
to  win  most  of  England's  battles  and  was  loyal  to  the 
flag.  Gradually  he  was  aware  that  there  was  something 
wrong  in  that  picture.  He  found  an  unexpected  cruelty 
in  the  Irish  people,  the  cruelty  of  the  peasant  mind 
brooding  over  old  grievances,  unforgiving,  relentless  in 
the  pursuit  of  vengeance.  Where  he  expected  weakness 
he  found  surprising  strength — most  obstinate  resistance 
to  English  "reason."  Where  he  looked  for  sentiment, 
especially  in  the  war  with  Germany,  he  found  the  hard- 
est realism,  a  most  selfish  refusal  of  allegiance,  and, 
worst  of  all,  black  treachery  to  Old  England  in  her  hour 
of  need.  What  was  the  meaning  of  that?  "What  the 
devil,"  he  asked,  plaintively,  "is  the  matter  with  these 
people?" 

It  must  be  remembered  that  the  average  Englishman 
knows  very  little  of  Irish  history.  He  does  not  read 
it  in  his  school  books;  he  does  not  find  it  in  his  news- 
papers. Vaguely  he  knows  and  admits  that  England 
in  the  old  days  was  "rather  rough"  on  Ireland,  and, 
generously,  as  it  seems  to  him,  he  wishes  to  make  amends. 
He  thinks  he  made  amends  by  the  Wyndham  Land 
Acts  which  enabled  the  peasants  to  buy  their  land  with 
English  credit,  and  for  the  life  of  him  he  cannot  under- 
stand why  the  Irish  hark  back  to  the  past  and  refuse  to 
recognize  that  England  is  a  good  friend. 

He  does  not  realize  that  anything  England  does  for 
Ireland,  or  has  done,  or  will  do,  is  not  received  with 
gratitude  as  a  favor,  or  as  a  generous  act,  but  is  re- 
garded  as   a  long-delayed   concession   forced   from   us, 

269 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

and  as  dust  in  the  balance  compared  with  half  a  thousand 
years  of  tyranny,  robbery,  and  brutality.  He  does 
not  understand  that  the  claim  for  national  independence 
has  never  been  abandoned  for  all  that  time,  and  that, 
though  the  spark  burns  dim  in  times  of  misery,  it  flames 
up  again  and  spreads,  as  nov/  it  spreads  again,  like 
a  prairie  fire  throughout  those  island  people  with  their 
frightful  remembrance  of  history,  their  cherished  faith, 
their  undying  pride. 

The  average  Englishman,  of  whom  I  was  one,  was 
shocked  to  his  inmost  soul  by  the  rebellion  of  1916.  I 
shall  never  forget  when  that  dreadful  news  came  to  us 
on  the  western  front.  We  had  been  through  a  ghastly 
winter  when  the  Germans  held  all  the  good  positions 
against  us  on  the  ridges  in  Flanders,  while  we  were  in 
the  flats  and  swamps  at  a  time  when  we  were  still  weak 
in  artillery,  so  that  they  pounded  our  men  with  shell 
fire  and  we  could  answer  back  but  feebly.  Day  after 
day,  night  after  night,  our  men  were  blown  to  bits,  our 
casualty  lists  lengthened  with  the  names  of  our  noblest 
youth,  and  we  knew  that  the  Germans  were  hardly 
touched  in  strength,  while  on  the  other  fronts  they  were 
winning  stupendous  victories  and  England's  Ufe  was 
menaced.  At  that  very  time  the  Irish  tried  to  stab  us 
in  the  back — did  stab  us  in  the  back.  Young  officers 
of  ours,  and  of  theirs,  on  leave  in  Dublin,  were  shot 
down,  sometimes  without  arms  in  their  hands.  Young 
Irish  boys  sniped  English  soldiers  from  the  roofs,  though 
some  of  our  officers  would  not  give  the  word  of  command 
to  fire  back  on  them,  as  I  know,  because  of  the  youth 
of  those  lads.  There  was  proof  since,  admitted  without 
shame,  that  the  Irish  leaders  were  in  negotiation  with 
the  Germans  for  active  help.  They  expected  German 
ships  to  arrive  with  arms  and  ammunition,  and  with 
fighting  men.  They  were  willing  to  get  any  kind  of 
German  help  in  order  to  defeat  England  in  her  time  of 

270 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

peril.  Count  Plunkett,  I  am  told,  went  in  disguise  to 
Germany  to  negotiate  this  aid.  Casement  in  Germany 
was  acting  on  his  own  initiative,  tortured  by  his  con- 
science and  by  his  fears.  When  that  news  came  to  us 
it  seemed  at  first  incredible,  and  then  unforgivable. 
It  is  still  hard  to  forget  or  forgive  by  any  Englishman, 
and  by  some  Irishmen.  An  Irish  general  said  to  me: 
"I  can  never  go  back  to  Ireland — never!  I  can  never 
take  off  my  hat  to  an  Irishman  again."  There  were 
tears  in  his  eyes  as  he  spoke. 

The  average  Englishman  did  not  know  the  Irish 
defense  of  that  act  of  rebeUion,  and,  if  he  knew,  would 
not  admit  a  word  of  it.  I  know,  and  will  set  it  out  with 
fairness.  The  Sinn  Feiner  said,  as  one  of  their  leaders 
said  to  me:  *'We  would  have  fought  for  you  if  you  had 
guaranteed  our  national  claims.  We  would  have  fought 
for  you  if  you  had  let  us  fight  under  our  own  flag  and 
in  our  own  Irish  brigades.  The  NationaHst  leaders 
(wrongly,  as  we  now  think)  arranged  a  scheme  of  re- 
cruiting— ^which  was  turned  down  by  your  War  Office. 
Hundreds  of  thousands  of  young  Irishmen  (stupidly,  as 
we  now  believe)  did  volunteer  and  were  drafted,  not  in 
their  own  brigade,  as  a  rule,  but  in  English  battalions, 
and  died  in  heaps  to  save  the  liberty  of  England  while 
strengthening  England's  tyranny  in  Ireland.  Gradually 
we  saw  this.  England's  fight  for  liberty  was  not  to  be 
our  liberty.  What  was  happening  in  Ulster?  The 
Ulster  volunteers  who  had  been  allowed  to  arm  against 
us  in  I9i4were  still  kept  back  in  Ulster,  while  our  men 
were  being  massacred  in  Gallipoli  and  France.  They 
stood  solid  as  a  menace  to  southern  Ireland,  with 
preferential  treatment  and  secret  help  from  England. 
Very  well!  We  began  to  recruit  our  own  volunteers. 
At  first  there  w^ere  two  groups — John  Redmond's, 
designed  for  the  help  of  England,  and  James  Connolly's, 
for  the  liberty  of  Ireland.     A  split  took  place,  led  by 

271 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

Connolly.  Presently  the  Redmond  men  drifted  over 
to  Connolly's  side — for  Ireland  and  not  for  England. 
Then  we  thought  we  saw  our  chance  of  victory.  Eng- 
land was  hard  pressed.  Germany  seemed  certain  of 
victory.  It  was  Ireland's  chance  of  liberty.  There 
were  divided  counsels — some  wanting  to  wait  until  we 
were  stronger.  Pearse  was  overborne  by  the  spirit  of 
Connolly.  But  the  arrangements  were  faulty,  and  the 
aflPair  was  a  tactical  mistake.  At  first  the  people  of 
Dublin  were  against  us.  They  cursed  us  for  our  fool- 
hardy act.  After  three  days,  when  the  'rebels,'  as 
England  called  them,  were  hard  pressed  and  losing,  and 
being  killed  in  large  numbers,  the  people  were  all  for  us. 
They  were  set  on  fire  by  the  heroism  of  those  boys,  and 
the  spirit  of  Ireland,  the  soul  of  Ireland,  was  stirred 
to  its  depths  by  pity,  by  pride,  by  the  old  call  of  nation- 
ality, and  then  by  an  undying  hatred  of  England,  when 
General  Maxwell  began  his  Bloody  Assizes,  executed 
James  Connolly  and  fourteen  others,  and  swept  into 
prison,  with  unnecessary  brutalities  and  horrors,  three 
thousand  young  Irish  lads.  After  that  Sinn  Fein  was 
established  in  every  Irish  home  outside  Protestant 
Ulster,  and  the  whole  people  were  dedicated  anew  to  the 
liberty  of  their  nation. " 

The  liberty  of  their  nation!  Were  they,  then,  groan- 
ing under  a  brutal  tyranny,  these  Irish  people,  who 
talked  like  that  with  a  passionate  sincerity  which  could 
not  be  doubted,  because  so  many  of  them  were  ready  to 
die,  and  did  die,  for  their  faith?  It  is  that  which  baffled 
the  English  mind,  not  conscious  of  imposing  tyranny  on 
Ireland  before  they  rose  in  rebellion. 


Ill 

Now  what  is  the  actual  truth  about  all  this  tragedy.? 
Was  Ireland  utterly  right,  or  utterly  wrong,  in  rising 

272 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

in  revolt  against  our  rule  and  going  to  all  lengths  in 
guerrilla  warfare  with  complete  ruthlessness,  to  obtain 
her  desires?  Or  was  England  utterly  right — or  utterly- 
wrong — in  regarding  this  warfare  as  murder  and  trying 
to  stamp  it  out  by  methods  as  ruthless  as  those  used 
against  her?  Will  England  be  justified  in  history — 
or  Ireland?  Above  all,  by  what  madness,  or  badness, 
or  insanity,  or  stupidity,  on  one  side  or  on  both  sides, 
did  our  two  peoples  come  to  such  a  pass  when  all  law 
was  abandoned  for  a  bloody  struggle  of  civil  strife, 
ghastly  in  its  commentary  on  those  hopes  of  inter- 
national peace  and  the  progress  of  humanity  which 
surged  up  in  many  hearts  out  of  the  utter  horror  of  the 
European  war? 

To  answer  these  questions  one  must  go  back  to  ancient 
history,  and  deal  with  passion  as  well  as  with  facts,  and 
with  illusion  as  well  as  with  reaUty,  for  there  can  be  no 
understanding  of  what  has  happened  in  recent  days 
without  a  knowledge  of  the  past. 

The  past  calls  to  the  present  in  the  Irish  mind,  like 
the  cry  of  the  banshee  wailing  through  the  ages  of  Irish 
history.  The  English  forget  their  past,  at  least  in  its 
most  hideous  aspect,  looking  at  the  present  with  reaHs- 
tic  eyes  and  forward  to  the  future  with  what  hope  they 
have.  But  the  Irish  have  a  long,  bitter,  relentless  mem- 
ory which  is  a  morbid  wound  in  their  psychology. 
The  English  say,  "Let  the  dead  past  bury  its  dead," 
but  the  Irish  rake  over  old  bones  and  make  relics  of  them 
for  animating  their  passion  afresh. 

I  saw  the  strength  and  passion  of  Irish  memory  before 
the  war,  in  Dublin.  On  a  Saturday  night  there  would 
be  little  groups  of  people  at  the  corners  of  back  streets 
listening  to  young  men  or  girls  standing  on  orange  boxes 
and  singing  or  reciting  old  songs  and  ballads.  I  listened 
to  them  sometimes,  and  always  they  were  ballads  of 
Irish  episodes  long  forgotten   and   meaningless  in  the 

273 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

English  mind.  They  were  about  the  battles  of  Limerick 
and  the  Boyne,  and  the  siege  of  Drogheda,  and  the  old 
evictions  of  Irish  peasants,  and  the  shooting  of  Irish 
by  English  redcoats.  Hardly  one  EngUshman  in  two 
million  could  tell  anything  at  all  about  those  battles. 
He  would  not  know  when  they  were  fought,  or  by  whom 
they  were  fought,  or  what  side  won.  But  in  the  Irish 
memory  they  belong  to  yesterday. 

Their  songs  are  filled  with  a  mournful  spirit  and  with 
the  passion  of  a  people  under  tyranny,  and  they  are  sung 
in  Irish  ears  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave.  I  remember 
going  one  night  to  a  httle  place  called  "Mooney's 
Oyster  Bar"  with  some  Irish  and  English  friends  and 
one  young  Jew.  Outside  in  the  yard  an  Irish  girl  was 
playing  a  fiddle  and  we  called  her  in  and  asked  her  to 
play  some  jig  tunes  for  our  gayety.  But  presently  the 
tunes  she  played  made  us  all  sad  because  of  the  notes 
of  tragedy  that  broke  even  through  her  jigs,  and  when 
the  Irishmen  in  our  company  began  to  sing  old  songs  to 
her  fiddle,  the  young  Jew  with  us,  who  was  a  little  drunk, 
wept  in  sympathy,  and  claimed  as  his  excuse  that  he  was 
descended  from  one  of  the  kings  of  Ireland!  If  that 
was  the  effect  on  a  Jew,  what  must  happen  in  the  spirit 
of  an  Irish  Catholic  when  he  hears  these  old  ballads  of 
his  race?  They  are  crooned  into  his  ears  as  he  lies  in 
his  cradle,  or  is  carried  in  the  arms  of  a  peasant  mother. 
From  the  time  he  learns  to  speak  he  hears  old  tales  and 
old  songs,  in  which  the  Irish  have  but  one  enemy — the 
Enghsh.  And  from  the  time  he  begins  to  read,  his  books 
are  filled  with  "the  wrongs  of  Ireland,"  the  bloody 
tyranny  of  the  Saxon.  From  a  thousand  years  ago  the 
ghosts  of  Irish  history  call  to  him.  In  old  wells,  and  in 
the  ruins  of  chapels,  castles,  shrines,  he  hears  their 
voices,  telling  him  of  the  glory  of  Ireland  when  it  was 
an  island  of  saints  and  scholars,  poets  and  painters, 
whose  illuminated  missals  and  golden  chalices  and  em- 

274 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

broidered  gowns  and  all  the  arts  and  crafts  of  life  gave 
them  a  civilization  and  a  culture  at  a  time  when  England 
was  inhabited  by  brutal,  unlettered  Saxons,  and  when 
northern  Europe  was  still  uncultured. 

Some  of  that  is  true,  but  what  is  less  known  to  the 
Irish  is  the  downfall  of  their  own  glory  by  an  internecine 
strife  in  which  the  English  had  no  part,  when  their  own 
"kings" — at  one  time  no  less  than  sixty — fought  against 
one  another  until  the  island  was  laid  waste  and  its  people 
reduced  to  misery  by  the  incessant  raids  and  ravagings, 
burnings  and  slaughterings,  of  rival  clans. 

"Why  did  the  English  ever  go  to  Ireland?  Who 
asked  them  to  go,  anyway  .f*"  shouted  a  voice  from  the 
gallery  of  a  hall  in  New  York  when  I  was  lecturing  there, 
and  not  to  score  a  point,  but  as  a  fact  of  history,  I  gave 
the  answer  that  the  English  went  at  the  request  of  Pope 
Adrian  IV,  in  the  reign  of  Henry  II,  "to  check  the  tide 
of  crime,  to  restore  Christian  worship,  and  to  reform 
the  manners  of  the  people,"  as  he  wrote  in  his  papal 
bull.  But,  as  I  admitted  to  the  New  York  audience, 
also  in  the  interests  of  truth  and  history,  the  advent  of 
the  English  and  their  subsequent  acts  did  not  give  the 
world,  or  the  Irish,  an  object  lesson  in  good  manners.  Our 
manners  were  disgusting,  and  our  methods  abominable. 

They  were  Normans  rather  than  English  who  went  to 
Ireland  with  the  consent  of  Henry  II,  and  they  parceled 
out  Ireland,  after  fierce  fights  with  the  Irish  chieftains, 
very  much  as  their  predecessors  had  invaded  and  par- 
titioned England  in  the  time  of  William  the  Conqueror. 
But  there  was  always  a  territory  which  the  Norman  chiefs 
in  Ireland  never  penetrated,  and  in  this  country  "be- 
yond the  pale,"  as  it  was  called,  the  Irish  kept  to  their 
own  customs  and  laws  until  they  captured  their  conquer- 
ors by  the  beauty  of  their  women,  and  many  of  the  Nor- 
man invaders,  like  the  Geraldines,  became  "more  Irish 
than  the  Irish." 

275 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

It  was  in  the  sixteenth  century,  during  the  reign  of 
Henry  VH,  that  EngHsh  law  began  to  press  heavily 
upon  the  Irish  people,  and  that  was  due  to  the  policy 
of  the  Anglo-Irish  chieftains  who  supported  the  two 
impostors,  Perkin  Warbeck  and  Lambert  Simnel,  in 
their  claim  to  the  English  crown.  In  retaliation, 
Tudor  Henry  sent  over  a  strong  army  under  Sir  Edward 
Poynings,  and  at  Drogheda  he  forced  the  Irish  Parlia- 
ment to  pass  a  measure  called  Poyning's  Act,  which 
declared  that  all  Enghsh  laws  should  have  force  in 
Ireland  and  that  all  legislation  in  the  Irish  Parliament 
should  be  confined  to  measures  which  had  first  been 
approved  by  the  King  and  the  Privy  Council  in  England. 
That  was  really  the  beginning  of  the  long  and  desperate 
struggle  between  the  Irish  and  the  English  peoples. 
Always  there  have  been  patriots  in  Ireland  to  raise 
revolt  against  the  power  and  practice  of  that  Act,  always 
the  ruling  caste  in  England  has  endeavored  to  enforce 
its  authority,  though  its  very  name  was  forgotten  except 
by  lawyers  and  historians. 

The  story  of  that  beginning  is  forgotten  in  Ireland 
itself,  but  they  still  remember  the  heroic  O'Neills  who 
defied  the  English  right  to  rule  in  Ireland,  and  the 
bloody  massacres  by  Elizabeth's  Earl  of  Essex,  who  was 
sent  to  suppress  their  uprisings. 

A  fatal  thing,  the  worst  of  all  for  England  as  for 
Ireland,  happened  when  the  Stuarts  followed  the 
Tudors.  It  was  under  James  I  that  Ireland,  weak  after 
long  strife,  was  first  colonized  by  Scottish  and  Protes- 
tant settlers  in  Ulster,  whose  numbers  were  increased, 
after  a  massacre  in  1641  by  Irish  CathoHcs,  when  Oliver 
Cromwell  came  over  to  revenge  himself  for  the  Irish 
support  of  Charles  I,  and  to  crush  their  claim  to  inde- 
pendence under  another  O'Neill.  By  that  colonization 
of  Ulster,  Ireland  became  no  longer  one  people,  but  two 
peoples,  divided  in  race,  in  religion,  in  every  strain  of 

276 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

temperament,  in  every  political  tradition.  It  was  the 
sowing  of  dragon's  teeth  in  Ireland. 

OUver  and  his  Roundheads  killed  the  Irish  CathoHcs 
with  the  joy  of  religious  fanaticism,  and  the  deeds  they 
did  in  the  name  of  the  Lord  are  remembered  with  the 
sweat  of  agony  in  Irish  blood.  Oliver  had  his  own  plan 
to  end  all  Irish  trouble.  It  was  to  fill  the  island  with 
more  Scots  and  English,  and  transport  the  Irish  to 
penal  settlements  beyond  the  sea,  where  most  of  them 
might  die.  In  some  measure  his  plan  was  fulfilled. 
Connaught  alone  was  made  into  a  reservation  for  the 
Irish,  into  which  thousands  of  them  were  driven  like 
cattle,  and  Irish  women  and  girls  were  shipped  off  to 
slavery  in  the  West  Indies.  It  was  a  crime  that  cried 
out  to  God  for  vengeance,  and  Sinn  Fein  has  remembered 
it  after  three  centuries.  What  is  one  of  the  miracles 
of  history  is  the  survival  of  the  Irish  spirit  and  of  their 
race  and  faith.  With  one  brief  respite  in  the  reign  of 
James  II,  for  whom  they  rose  when  he  lost  the  English 
crown,  and  then  the  Irish  harp,  at  the  battle  of  the 
Boyne,  the  policy  of  Protestant  England  for  those  three 
hundred  years  or  so  was  to  kill  Catholicism  in  Ireland, 
and  destroy  the  Catholic  Irish,  if  not  by  physical  ex- 
termination, at  least  by  causing  the  death  of  their  trade, 
their  industries,  their  political  power,  their  racial  spirit, 
their  language,  their  laws,  and  their  religion. 

William  III  enacted  the  penal  laws  which  in  successive 
reigns  ruled  out  a  Catholic  Irishman  from  all  human 
dignity.  No  Catholic  was  allowed  to  sit  in  the  Irish 
Parliament  (whose  privileges  were  constantly  reduced), 
nor  to  have  any  voice  in  making  the  laws  of  his  own 
land,  nor  to  hold  any  public  office.  His  priests  were 
hunted  like  vermin  from  hovel  to  hovel,  and  killed  when 
caught.  No  Irishman,  as  late  as  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, could  own  a  horse  worth  more  than  five  pounds, 

and  any  Protestant  enemy  might  demand  it  from  him 

277 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

on  payment  of  that  sum.  The  Irish  peasantry  were 
the  serfs  of  English,  or  Anglo-Irish,  landlords — worse, 
indeed,  than  slaves,  who  are  well  fed  by  their  owners, 
for  they  had  to  scrape  their  own  livelihood  out  of  plots 
they  hired  at  a  rental  beyond  their  means,  and  were 
dispossessed  of  the  land  if  they  could  not  pay  their 
rents,  increased  remorselessly  if  the  value  of  the  land 
went  up  owing  to  their  industry  and  their  improvements. 


IV 

So  great  was  the  misery  of  the  people,  and  yet  so  won- 
derful their  spirit,  so  infamous  was  the  injustice  of 
English  rule  which  deHberately  destroyed  Irish  industry 
lest  it  should  compete  with  English  trade,  that  even 
the  Protestant  members  of  the  Irish  Parliament,  like 
Henry  Grattan,  revolted  against  the  suppression  of  the 
Catholics  and  voted  for  their  emancipation.  It  was  at 
the  time  of  the  American  War  of  Independence,  and 
Grattan  was  supported  by  a  large  number  of  Irish 
volunteers  who  had  enrolled  themselves  as  a  defense 
force  against  American  attack.  Under  the  pressure  of 
this  movement,  the  British  government  agreed  to  pass 
an  Act  of  Catholic  emancipation,  but  George  HI,  with 
the  Catholic  bogey  always  in  his  mad  old  mind,  took 
fright,  at  the  eleventh  hour,  and  refused  his  assent.  It 
was  then  that  the  volunteers,  who  had  been  a  loyal 
force,  under  the  name  of  United  Irishmen,  turned  to 
rebellion.  In  the  time  of  the  French  Revolution  they 
made  overtures  to  Napoleon  to  help  them  in  their  cause, 
as  a  century  later,  without  the  same  excuse,  another 
body  of  Irishmen  turned  to  Germany  for  the  same  kind 
of  aid.  A  French  fleet  was  wrecked  by  storms,  and 
the  United  Irishmen  were  crushed  by  Sir  Ralph  Aber- 
crombie  with  his  English  redcoats  in  a  bloody  and  ruth- 
less way. 

278 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

In  1782,  before  the  outburst  of  that  rebellion,  but 
when  there  was  a  demand  for  coercive  measures  against 
the  Irish  volunteers,  Charles  James  Fox  warned  the 
British  government  of  the  danger  of  such  policy,  and 
the  liberality  and  wisdom  of  his  words  might  have  rung 
in  the  ears  of  British  Ministers  when,  after  a  hundred 
and  thirty  years,  history  repeated  itself. 

The  Irish,  finding  that  they  had  nothing  to  expect 
in  the  British  House  of  Commons  from  the  justice  of 
their  demands,  found  resources  in  themselves;  they 
armed;  their  Parliament  spoke  out;  and  the  very  next 
year,  the  same  Minister  who  had  before  put  a  negative 
on  all  their  expectations,  came  down  to  the  House  and 
made  the  amende  honorable  for  his  past  conduct,  gave 
to  the  demands  of  an  armed  people  infinitely  more  than 
he  had  refused  to  the  modest  application  of  an  unarmed, 
humble  nation.  Such  had  been  the  conduct  of  the 
then  Minister  and  his  colleagues;  and  this  was  the  les- 
son which  the  Irish  had  been  taught:  "If  you  want 
anything,  seek  for  it  not  unarmed  and  humbly,  but 
take  up  arms  and  speak  manfully  and  boldly  to  the 
British  Ministry,  and  you  will  obtain  more  than  at 
first  you  might  have  ventured  to  expect." 

This  was  the  consequence,  said  Fox,  of  the  ill  use 
of  the  superintending  power  of  the  British  Parliament, 
which  had  made  millions  of  subjects  rise  against  a  Power 
which  they  felt  only  as  a  scourge.  At  the  same  time 
Fox  made  it  plain  that  he  yielded  to  the  demands  of 
the  Irish  for  the  right  to  legislate  for  themselves  with- 
out interference  because  he  believed  them  to  be  founded 
on  justice,  and  not  because  they  were  demanded  with 
the  force  of  arms : 

"He  must  be  a  shallow  politician  who  would  resort 
to  such  means  (those  taken  in  the  war  with  America) 
to  enforce  obedience  to  laws  which  were  odious  to  those 
whom  they  were  made  to  bind."     For  his  part,  he  would 

279 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

rather  see  Ireland  totally  separated  from  the  Crown  of 
England  than  kept  in  obedience  only  by  force.  Un- 
willing subjects  were  little  better  than  enemies;  it 
would  be  better  not  to  have  subjects  at  all  than  to  have 
such  as  would  be  continually  on  the  watch  to  seize  the 
opportunity  of  making  themselves  free.  If  this  country 
should  attempt  to  coerce  Ireland,  and  succeed  in  the 
attempt,  the  consequence  would  be  that,  at  the  breaking 
out  of  war  with  every  foreign  Power,  the  first  step 
must  be  to  send  troops  over  to  secure  Ireland  instead 
of  calling  upon  her  to  give  a  willing  support  to  the 
common  cause.  .  .  .  He  desired  to  look  forward  to 
that  happy  period  when  Ireland  should  experience  the 
blessings  that  attend  freedom  of  trade  and  constitution; 
when  by  the  richness  and  fertility  of  her  soil,  the  indus- 
try of  her  manufacturers,  and  the  increase  of  her  popu- 
lation she  should  become  a  powerful  country.  Then 
might  England  look  for  powerful  assistance  in  seamen 
to  man  her  fleets,  and  soldiers  to  fight  her  battles. 
England  renouncing  all  right  to  legislate  for  Ireland,  the 
latter  would  more  cordially  support  the  former  as  a 
friend  whom  she  loved.  If  this  country,  on  the  other 
hand,  was  to  assume  the  powers  of  making  laws  for 
Ireland,  she  must  only  make  an  enemy  instead  of  a 
friend;  for  where  there  was  not  a  community  of  inter- 
ests, and  a  mutual  regard  for  those  interests,  there  the 
party  whose  interests  were  sacrificed  became  an  enemy. 

After  the  failure  of  the  Irish  rebellion,  Pitt  and  his 
agents  set  to  work  to  unite  Ireland  and  England  under 
one  legislature,  and  they  found  bribery  an  easy  way. 
By  payments  of  money,  and  land,  and  places,  the  Irish 
votes  in  the  Dublin  Parliam.ent  were  bought  in  numbers 
sufficient  to  pass  the  Act  of  Union. 

It  was  an  Act  which  Mr.  Gladstone  said  "was  carried 
by  means  so  indescribably  foul  and  vile  that  it  can  have 
no  moral  title  to  existence  whatever." 

280 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

And,  as  Lecky  wrote:  "In  a  country  where  the  sen- 
timent of  nationality  was  as  intense  as  in  any  part  of 
Europe,  it  destroyed  the  national  legislature  contrary 
to  the  manifest  wish  of  the  people,  and  by  means  so 
corrupt,  treacherous,  and  shameful  that  they  are  never 
likely  to  be  forgotten.  The  Union  of  1800  was  not  only 
a  great  crime,  but,  like  most  crimes — a  great  blunder." 

After  that,  in  the  beginning  of  the  industrial  era  of 
England,  the  work  of  ruin  in  Ireland  was  completed 
by  "Cutthroat  Castlereagh"  and  the  manufacturing 
interests  in  the  English  House  of  Commons,  who  put 
up  tariff  walls  against  Irish  industries,  so  blockading 
the  commercial  life  of  that  unhappy  island.  Catholic 
emancipation  was  gained  at  last  by  the  renewal  of 
revolt  under  Daniel  O'Connell,  to  which  George  IV 
yielded  on  the  advice  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  who 
said  he  "wanted  no  more  war,"  but  the  spiritual  relief  of 
the  victory  was  overwhelmed  by  the  agony  of  another 
tragedy  in  Irish  history — the  great  famine  of  1845. 

I  fell  into  trouble  in  America  by  saying  that  the 
English  were  not  responsible  at  least  for  that  act  of 
nature,  which  was  caused  by  the  blight  of  the  potato 
crop,  upon  which  the  main  bulk  of  the  people  lived.  And 
perhaps  my  critics  were  right  in  saying  that,  though  we 
did  not  cause  the  blight,  the  famine  itself  would  not 
have  come  if  the  Irish  people  had  not  been  reduced  to 
such  a  single  source  of  Ufe  by  our  brutahties.  Indeed, 
they  were  right.  We  cannot  even  claim  that  as  com- 
fort to  our  conscience.  It  was  a  chapter  as  terrible  as 
anything  in  human  history.  Thousands  perished  of 
starvation  and  disease.  They  fell  dead  on  the  roadsides, 
and  children  like  living  skeletons  climbed  about  the 
corpses  of  their  mothers  until  they  too  died.  One 
woman  went  mad  and  ate  her  own  child.  The  Irish 
people  fled  from  their  own  island  as  though  it  were 
plague-stricken,  as  indeed  it  was.  They  crowded  into 
19  281 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

any  kind  of  vessel  which  would  carry  them  to  America, 
and  many  died  in  the  holds  before  they  could  reach  the 
promised  land.  The  tide  of  emigration  which  then 
began  ceased  only  for  a  spell  when  war  broke  out  in 
1914,  and  the  population  of  Ireland  dwindled  down  in 
every  decade,   as  these  figures  show: 

1841 8,170,000 

1851 6,sss,ooo 

1861 5,790,000 

1871 5,410,000 

1881 5,170,000 

1891 4,700,000 

1901 4,450,000 

1911 4,390,000 

The  figures  for  1 921  will  perhaps  never  be  known,  for 
the  Census  was  opposed  by  Sinn  Fein.  It  is  certain, 
however,  that  they  show  an  increase  over  191 1,  on 
account  of  the  ban  upon  emigration  by  the  leaders  of 
the  Irish  Republican  Army,  who  wished  to  retain  Irish 
youth  for  their  guerrilla  warfare. 

These  figures  of  depopulation  tell  a  tragic  tale,  yet 
the  significance  of  them  is  exaggerated  by  Irish  writers, 
for  if  there  had  been  no  famine,  the  lure  of  America 
would  have  led  to  a  great  emigration  from  a  Httle  island 
not  large  enough  to  support  its  population  after  inten- 
sive agriculture  had  been  replaced  by  cattle  farming 
after  the  repeal  of  the  corn  laws.  Nevertheless,  in  its 
first  phase  it  was  due  to  famine. 

What  is  the  use  of  raking  up  that  old,  old  history.?  .  .  . 
Because  unless  we  remind  ourselves  from  time  to 
time  of  its  leading  facts,  we  cannot  begin  to  under- 
stand the  things  that  have  happened  in  these  recent 
years.  What  I  have  told  in  a  few  pages  is  but  the 
outline  of  the  story  which  in  Ireland  is  celebrated  in  all 
its   details   of  horror — and   they   are   horrible — written 

282 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

and  rewritten,  read  and  reread  in  history  books  and 
romances,  told  and  retold  with  wrath,  and  tears,  and 
pity,  and  pride  (pride  in  the  Irish  spirit  of  resistance, 
its  unbreakable  spirit  through  the  centuries),  in  every 
Irish  school,  among  every  Irish  group  of  "intellectuals," 
and  by  every  Irish  priest.  All  that  black  drama  is  in 
the  background  of  the  Irish  mind,  as  a  tradition  stronger 
than  all  modern  influence,  as  a  national  heritage  of  the 
soil  which  inspires  all  their  folk  songs,  and  as  a  passion 
which  may  burn  low  at  times  but  is  ready  to  flame  up 
again  when  the  embers  are  stirred. 

It  burned  low,  that  old  passion  of  remembrance,  some 
years  before  the  war.  There  was  almost  a  chance  of 
its  dying  out  at  the  end  of  the  last  century,  when  the 
Irish  peasants  were  doing  well  and  liberty  was  no  longer 
outraged.  But  at  that  very  time  of  increasing  prosperity 
there  was  a  renaissance  of  Irish  culture,  which  began  to 
stir  up  the  embers — poets  like  W.  B.  Yeats  and  George 
Russell,  historians  hke  Barry  O'Brien  and  Gavin  Duffy, 
and  a  group  of  brilliant  young  men,  both  Protestant 
and  Catholic,  called  back  to  the  past  and  summoned 
up  its  ghosts.  At  first  it  was  a  purely  literary  move- 
ment. The  Gaelic  League  was  started  to  revive  the 
Irish  language  and  literature.  Irish  literary  societies 
were  estabhshed  in  many  cities.  Irish  art  and  music, 
from  the  tenth  century  onward,  were  rediscovered  and 
made  popular.  All  that  intellectual  activity,  not 
rebellious  in  its  purpose,  brilliant  and  scholarly  in  its 
expression,  accepted  with  sympathy  and  enthusiasm  by 
English  students,  was  a  new  flowering  time  of  the  Irish 
spirit,  reveahng  anew  its  wonderful  endurance  and  its 
great  sources  of  inspiration.  But  it  awakened  the  old 
national  instincts,  and  opened  the  old  wounds  so  that 
they  bled  afresh. 

Another  thing  happened,  not  without  tragic  con- 
sequences  in   the   future.    The   Irish   priesthood   had 

383 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

formerly  received  its  training  outside  Ireland,  in  Eng- 
land, in  France,  and  other  countries,  where  these  young 
men,  the  sons  of  small  Irish  farmers  for  the  most  part, 
broadened  their  vision  of  life,  and  realized  that  Ireland 
was  not  the  only  country  in  the  world  nor  the  one  which 
had  all  the  troubles.  But  the  Catholic  hierarchy 
established  Maynooth  as  the  training  college  for  Irish 
priests  and  it  became  the  training  ground  also  for  Sinn 
Fein.  For  there,  in  an  Irish  atmosphere,  among  Irish 
books,  meeting  none  but  Irish  minds,  these  candidates 
for  the  priesthood  were  closed  in  from  the  outside  world 
and  became  intensely  national  and  introspective.  The 
woes  of  Ireland  in  the  past  worked  in  their  brains. 
The  glory  of  Ireland  a  thousand  years  ago  was  their 
starting  point  in  historical  vision.  The  martyrdom  of 
Catholic  Ireland  in  the  days  of  the  penal  laws  fired  them 
with  their  own  faith  and  enthusiasm.  The  crimes  of 
England  burned  also  in  their  hearts  again,  and  in  their 
narrow  sphere  of  life  they  could  not  dissociate  the  past 
from  the  present  in  their  view  of  English  character. 
Those  young  men  became  the  parish  priests  of  Ireland, 
the  teachers  in  the  schools,  the  leaders  of  every  Httle 
group  of  adult  scholars,  the  chairmen  of  political  meet- 
ings, and  the  dominating  influence  in  social  and  rehgious 
life  of  rural  districts.  It  was  they  above  all  who  re- 
vived old  memories  and,  with  them,  their  bitterness  and 
their  hate.  Afterward,  when  Sinn  Fein  replaced  the 
old  Nationalists  and  raised  the  Republican  flag,  it  was 
the  priests  from  Maynooth  who  gave  a  spiritual  sanc- 
tion to  the  guerrilla  war,  inflamed  the  ardors  of  Irish 
boys,  comforted  the  wounded  and  the  prisoners,  ab- 
solved those  condemned  to  execution,  and  promised 
the  crown  of  martyrdom  to  those  who  died  for  Ireland's 
sake.  It  was  no  harder  for  them  to  reconcile  their 
faith  in  Christ  with  this  way  of  warfare  than  for  our 
own  chaplains  to  reconcile  theirs  with  the  endless  killing 

284 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

of  Germans — though  how  it  was  done  in  either  case  was 
hard  to  understand  by  many  simple  men  who  beheved 
that  Christ's  message  was  one  of  peace  and  charity 
rather  than  war  and  hate,  at  least  among  people  who 
professed  to  worship  the  same  God. 

The  intensity  with  which  the  Irish  mind  has  been 
fixed  upon  the  tragedy  of  Irish  history  has  a  morbid 
effect  not  unlike  the  "persecution  mania"  of  advanced 
melancholia.  To  hear  an  Irishman  talk  of  all  the  woes 
of  the  distressful  isle,  one  might  imagine  that  other 
people — and  especially  the  English — enjoyed  full  liberty 
of  self-government,  a  human  code  of  laws,  and  great 
material  prosperity  throughout  those  centuries  when 
Ireland  was  under  the  tyranny  of  a  despotic  Power, 
miserably  impoverished,  and  crushed  by  the  brutality 
of  the  penal  laws.  Nothing  can  ever  excuse  the  abomi- 
nable treatment  of  Ireland  by  English  kings  and  states- 
men prior  to  the  Victorian  era,  and  I  shall  write  nothing 
to  whitewash  that  black  injustice,  but  the  Irish  people 
should  broaden  the  horizon  of  their  imagination  by  a 
wider  knowledge  of  world  history,  including  that  of 
England.  At  the  time  when  Catholics  in  Ireland 
were  being  hunted  for  their  faith,  there  was  no  mercy  to 
Catholics  in  England.  Their  priests  were  chased, 
tortured,  and  killed,  and  by  unrelenting  severity  the 
old  faith  was  destroyed  throughout  the  length  and 
breadth  of  the  land.  The  peasants  of  England  were 
hardly  better  than  serfs,  and  had  no  land  of  their  own, 
but  were  the  hired  men  of  the  tenant  farmers,  paid 
wretched  wages  and  thrust  into  miserable  hovels. 
Even  as  late  as  the  year  of  the  last  European  war  the 
farm  laborers  of  Somersetshire  and  many  parts  of 
England  were  paid  no  more  than  fourteen  shillings  a 
week,  upon  which  they  had  to  keep  their  families.  As 
for  liberty,  it  needed  a  long  and  desperate  struggle 
before  the  English  masses  were  able  to  vote  as  free  men 

285 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

and  to  share  in  the  making  of  the  laws  which  governed 
them.  Chartist  riots,  the  "Peterloo"  massacre,  the 
threat  and  fear  of  revolutions  in  the  early  nineteenth 
century,  preceded  the  granting  of  the  franchise  to  the 
working  classes.  In  the  industrial  era  which  followed 
the  invention  of  the  steam  engine  and  the  "spinning 
jenny,"  it  is  doubtful  whether  the  life  of  Irish  peasants 
in  the  poorest  parts  of  Connaught,  and  in  the  worst 
period  of  English  misrule  and  cruelty,  was  not  prefer- 
able by  far  to  that  of  the  factory  hands  in  such  towns  as 
Manchester,  Bolton,  Oldham,  Wigan,  and  Sheffield. 
The  Irish  peasant,  if  he  did  not  die  in  the  famine  of  '45, 
lived  at  least  a  human  Hfe,  under  God's  free  sky.  He 
preserved  his  manhood  and  dignity  of  soul,  and  his 
women  and  children  kept  their  beauty  and  grace.  But 
in  the  industrial  towns  of  England,  men  and  women  and 
little  children  endured  a  w^orse  form  of  slavery  than  that 
of  ancient  Rome,  suffered  more  cruelty  in  their  bodies 
and  souls,  and  were  stunted  and  made  inhuman  by  the 
hardships  and  filthy  conditions  of  their  Hfe.  They 
worked  fourteen  hours  and  more  a  day  in  overcrowded 
and  insanitary  mills,  without  sufficient  hght  and  air 
for  human  beings,  and  their  children  were  made  slaves 
of  the  machines  and  werea  bominably  ill  used  before 
they  had  known  the  first  joys  of  childhood  or  any  kind 
of  joy.  Their  hovels  were  worse  than  Irish  hovels, 
more  foul,  more  pestilential,  and  the  hard-faced  manu- 
facturers of  the  North  and  Midlands  were  more  cruel 
taskmasters  than  the  Anglo-Irish  landlords,  who  in 
many  cases  were  kindly  and  easy-going  men.  Where 
was  the  liberty  of  the  English  folk  in  the  eighteenth 
century?  It  is  our  ignorance  of  history  which  pretends 
they  had  the  right  or  power  to  govern  themselves.  They 
were  ruled,  brutally,  by  the  same  people  who  made 
the  tragedy  of  Ireland.  The  Irish  penal  laws  were 
infamous.     So  also  were  the  penal  laws  of  England  in 

286 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

that  cruel  century  of  history  which  preceded  the  Act  of 
Union,  and  afterward. 

As  I  write,  I  have  by  my  side  a  document  which  I 
picked  up  by  hazard  in  the  Old  Bailey  of  London, 
before  a  new  Court  of  Justice  replaced  the  former 
building.  It  reveals  in  a  blinding  Ught  the  social  state 
of  England  in  the  Napoleonic  era.  It  is  a  list  of  one 
hundred  convicts  ''embarked  on  board  the  Morly  for 
New  South  Wales  from  the  Dolphin  Hulk  at  Chatham, 
this  29th  day  of  July  1829,  pursuant  to  the  Right  Honour- 
able Robert  Peel's  order  of  the  15th  day  of  July  1829." 
Most  of  the  men  were  under  middle  age,  many  of  them 
young  boys,  and  all  of  them  were  sentenced  to  terms 
varying  from  fourteen  years  to  penal  servitude  for  life 
and  transportation  to  Botany  Bay,  for  petty  crimes 
which  now  would  be  dealt  with  under  the  First  Offend- 
ders  Act,  without  imprisonment. 

Thomas  Cook,  a  boy  of  fifteen,  gets  a  life  sentence 
(which  in  many  cases  meant  a  death  sentence,  as  all 
know  who  have  read  the  story  of  those  prison  ships  on 
their  way  to  Australia) — for  stealing  an  apron. 

Peter  Haigh,  eighteen  years  of  age,  is  sentenced  to 
penal  servitude  for  life  for  stealing  a  piece  of  printed 
cotton. 

For  stealing  a  candlestick,  Thomas  Porter,  sixteen 
j'^ears  of  age,  is  sentenced  to  fourteen  years  and  trans- 
portation. For  stealing  a  piece  of  worsted,  James 
JefFeries,  aged  seventeen,  is  sentenced  to  fourteen  years 
and  transportation;  and  so  on  throughout  the  list.  For 
breaking  a  threshing  machine  (in  the  time  of  the  machin- 
ery riots);  for  stealing  handkerchiefs,  or  bread  when 
they  were  starving,  girls,  as  well  as  boys,  were  sentenced 
to  death  and  hanged  in  batches  as  late  as  the  early 
nineteenth  century,  in  Merrie  England.  Looking  back 
upon  that  time,  I  fancy  Ireland  was  a  happier  isle  in 
spite  of  all  her  misery.      It  was  a  cruel  time  everywhere 

287 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

and  until  recent  years  most  of  us  believed  that  we  had 
got  beyond  it,  to  an  age  of  greater  human  kindness. 
But  the  European  war,  and  history  that  has  happened 
afterward,  spoiled  that  illusion,  with  many  others. 

When  all  is  said  and  done,  England  used  the  enhghten- 
ment  that  came  to  her  in  happier  times,  to  make  amends 
in  Ireland.  Liberal  thought  in  England  did  at  last 
prevail  as  our  people  struggled  forward  to  greater  liberty 
of  their  own,  and  at  last  regained  it.  The  Irish  are  not 
grateful,  and  pretend  that  we  have  behaved  always 
toward  them  with  the  same  intolerance  and  the  same 
selfishness,  but  that  is  not  the  verdict  of  impartial  his- 
tory. The  series  of  Land  Acts  which  have  enabled 
the  Irish  peasantry  to  possess  their  own  soil  by  means 
of  English  credits  were  generous  in  their  inspiration 
and  beneficent  in  their  result.  Nor  is  it  true  to  say,  as 
Irish  writers  say,  that  those  concessions  were  forced 
upon  the  House  of  Commons  by  the  power  of  the 
Nationahst  votes,  for  though  Mr.  Gladstone's  first 
Home  Rule  bill  of  1 886  may  have  been  influenced  by 
that  thought,  the  great  Land  Act  of  1903  was  passed  by 
a  Parliament  in  which  Unionists  were  in  a  great  majority 
over  Liberals  and  Nationalists  combined. 


The  story  of  the  land  in  Ireland  is,  of  course,  the  key 
to  many  of  her  historical  troubles,  from  the  time  the 
Normans  seized  most  of  it,  and  the  best  of  it,  from  the 
Irish  chieftains.  Throughout  the  centuries  the  people 
were  mainly  agricultural,  and  it  was  the  repeal  of  the 
Corn  Laws  in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century 
which  diminished  wheat-growing  in  Ireland  (as  well 
as  in  England)  and  changed  it  to  a  cattle-raising 
country.     This  had  an  immense  effect  upon  the  small 

288 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

tenant  farmers,  for  the  landlords  desired  to  get  rid  of 
them  from  their  holdings,  in  order  to  increase  the  pas- 
ture land.  Evictions  took  place  with  pitiable  scenes, 
and,  unable  to  get  work  in  factories  like  the  English 
peasants  who  were  also  pushed  off  the  land,  their  only 
chance  was  emigration  to  the  United  States.  That, 
as  well  as  the  famine,  was,  as  I  have  said,  the  cause  of 
the  human  tide  flowing  from  Ireland  to  America. 

It  was  in  1870  that  a  first  attempt  was  made  to  reform 
the  miserable  land  system  of  Ireland,  and  the  tenant 
was  recognized  in  a  limited  way  as  part  owner  of  the 
soil  on  which  he  labored.  Later,  in  1881,  Mr.  Gladstone 
still  further  improved  the  status  of  the  Irish  tenant 
farmer  by  an  Act  known  as  the  Three  F's — Fair  Rent, 
Free  Sale,  and  Fixity  of  Tenure.  But  the  beginning 
of  prosperity  in  Ireland  was  made  a  reality  by  the  Land 
Acts  of  1 891  and  1905,  founded  by  George  Wyndham, 
a  descendant  of  the  Irish  Geraldines  and  a  brilliant, 
sympathetic  man,  under  Mr.  Balfour's  administration, 
enabling  tenants  to  purchase  their  holdings  on  money 
advanced  by  the  British  government  to  a  special  Land 
Stock,  bearing  interest  at  2^  per  cent.  Compulsory 
powers  of  purchase  were  given  to  the  commissions 
appointed  to  administer  these  Acts,  so  that  landlords 
could  not  refuse  to  part  with  their  soil  when  it  was 
desperately  needed. 

The  total  amount  of  money  advanced  by  us  for  land 
purchase  in  Ireland  from  1870  to  1919  was  a  hun- 
dred and  five  and  a  half  million  pounds— an  immense 
amount  of  money,  even  now  when  our  minds  have 
been  stunned  by  the  grotesque  figures  of  war  debts. 
Nor  were  the  Irish  people  asked  to  pay  a  higher  interest 
when  by  war  exhaustion  England  was  forced  to  beg  and 
borrow.  While  we  were  raising  loans  at  6  per  cent, 
we  were  lending  to  Ireland  at  less  than  3  per  cent. 
In  addition  to  the  hundred  and  five  and  a  half  miUions 

289 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

mentioned  above,  we  advanced  nearly  five  million 
pounds  to  the  Irish  rural  district  councils  for  the  build- 
ing of  laborers'  cottages. 

The  world  ought  to  know  these  facts,  and  that  is 
why  I  am  writing  them — in  case  a  few  people  in  the 
world  may  read  them.  For  it  is  fair  and  just  to  say 
that  the  English  people  had  made  some  amends  at  least, 
not  inconsiderable,  not  ungenerous,  for  their  bad  treat- 
ment of  Ireland,  and  that  in  material  prosperity  as  well 
as  in  the  affairs  of  local  government  they  were  already 
a  world  away  from  the  misery  that  followed  the  famine 
of  '45.  This  cannot  be  disputed  with  any  honesty  by 
Irish  writers.  It  is  undeniable,  and  confirmed  by  many 
of  their  own  leaders.  Take,  for  instance,  words  spoken 
by  John  Redmond,  a  year  after  the  beginning  of  the 
Great  War.  Though  he  lost  favor  with  his  own  people 
before  dying  with  a  broken  heart,  no  Irishman,  if  he  has 
any  honesty,  will  deny  that  he  was  a  great  patriot  and  a 
great  gentleman,  whose  whole  life  was  devoted  to  the 
country  he  loved.  It  was  John  Redmond  who  made 
the  following  statement  in  Australia,  comparing  the 
condition  of  Ireland  with  what  it  was  thirty  years 
earlier. 

I  went  to  Australia  to  make  an  appeal  on  behalf  of  an  enslaved, 
famine-hunted,  despairing  people,  a  people  in  the  throes  of  semi- 
revolution,  bereft  of  all  political  liberties  and  engaged  in  a  life-and- 
death  struggle  with  the  system  of  a  most  brutal  and  drastic  coercion. 
Only  thirty-three  or  thirty-four  years  have  passed  since  then,  but 
what  a  revolution  has  occurred  in  the  interval.  To-day  the  people, 
broadly  speaking,  own  the  soil;  to-day  the  laborers  live  in  decent 
habitations;  to-day  there  is  absolute  freedom  in  the  local  government 
and  the  local  taxation  of  the  country;  to-day  we  have  the  widest 
Parliament  in  the  municipal  franchise;  to-day  we  know  that  the 
evicted  tenants  who  are  the  wounded  soldiers  of  the  land  war  have 
been  restored  to  their  homes,  or  to  other  homes  as  good  as  those 
from  which  they  had  been  originally  driven.  We  know  that  the 
congested  districts,  the  scene  of  some  of  the  most  awful  horrors  of 

290 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

the  old  famine  days,  have  been  transformed,  that  the  farms  have  been 
enlarged,  decent  dwellings  have  been  provided,  and  a  new  spirit  of 
hope  and  independence  is  to-day  among  the  people.  We  know 
that  in  the  towns  legislation  has  been  passed  facilitating  the  housing 
of  the  working  classes.  So  far  as  the  town  tenants  are  concerned, 
we  have  this  consolation,  that  we  have  passed  for  Ireland  an  Act 
whereby  they  are  protected  against  arbitrary  eviction,  and  are  given 
compensation  not  only  for  disturbance  from  their  homes,  but  for 
the  good-will  of  the  business  they  had  created,  a  piece  of  legislation 
far  in  advance  of  anything  obtained  for  the  town  tenants  of  England. 
I  may  add,  far  in  advance  of  any  legislation  obtained  for  the  town 
tenants  of  any  other  country.  We  know  that  we  have  at  least  won 
educational  freedom  in  university  education  for  most  of  the  youth 
of  Ireland,  and  we  know  that  in  primary  and  standard  education  the 
thirty-four  years  that  have  passed  have  witnessed  an  enormous 
advance  in  efficiency  and  in  the  means  provided  for  bringing  effi- 
ciency about.  To-day  we  have  a  system  of  old-age  pensions  in  Ire- 
land whereby  every  old  man  and  woman  over  seventy  is  saved  from 
the  workhouse,  free  to  spend  their  last  days  in  comparative  comfort. 
We  have  a  system  of  national  industrial  insurance  which  provides 
for  the  health  of  the  people  and  makes  it  impossible  for  the  poor 
hard-working  man  and  woman,  when  sickness  comes  to  the  door, 
to  be  carried  away  to  the  workhouse  hospital,  and  makes  it  certain 
that  they  will  receive  decent,  Christian  treatment  during  their 
illness. 

In  her  material,  and,  indeed,  in  her  spiritual  state, 
Ireland,  therefore,  was  no  longer  wretched  and  down- 
trodden, but  well  fed,  gaining  in  wealth,  with  a  sense 
of  well-being.  So  it  was  before  the  war;  and  after  the 
War,  and  throughout  the  war,  Ireland  was  prosperous  as 
few  other  countries,  and  suffered  none  of  the  privations 
which  came  to  England.  At  a  time  when  middle-class 
English  households  were  strictly  rationed,  when  middle- 
class  Enghsh  mothers  were  standing  in  long  queues  in 
the  dark,  wet  days,  to  get  their  allowances  of  meat  or 
groceries,  when  milk  was  difficult  to  get  for  babes, 
when  butter  could  not  be  got,  and  eggs  had  disappeared, 
the  Irish  folk  had  all  these  good  things  in  rich  abun- 

291 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

dance.  Their  imports  jumped  up,  from  seventy-three 
miUion  pounds  sterling  in  1914,  to  a  hundred  and  twenty- 
six  million  pounds  in  191 8,  and  their  exports  from 
seventy-seven  million  pounds  sterling  in  1914  to  a 
hundred  and  fifty-two  millions  in  1918.  In  1916  the 
value  of  cattle  and  beef  exported  from  Ireland  to  Great 
Britain  far  exceeded  the  value  imported  from  any  other 
country.  From  Ireland  it  amounted  to  £20,580,000; 
from  the  Argentine,  £12,785,000,  and  from  the  United 
States,  £3,520,000.  As  an  exporter  of  bacon,  hams, 
pork,  and  pigs,  Ireland  stood  second  to  the  United 
States.  Her  exports  of  poultry  and  eggs  to  Great 
Britain  were  higher  than  those  from  any  other  country. 
In  butter  she  stood  second  to  Denmark,  and  in  oats 
third  to  the  United  States  and  the  Argentine.  Her  in- 
crease in  private  wealth  during  the  years  of  war  is  shown 
to  some  extent  by  the  Irish  Bank  deposits,  which  were 
£61,955,000  in  1914,  and  £91,361,000  in  1917. 

Nobody  in  England  begrudges  Ireland  this  advance 
in  prosperity.  It  does  not  pay  back  for  centuries  of 
poverty  due  to  misrule,  and  for  many  extortions  of 
Anglo-Irish  lords  and  gentlemen.  But  at  least  it  is  a 
proof  that  the  evil  regime  had  ended  and  that  Ireland 
was  well  on  the  road  to  national  welfare.  They  had  no 
need  to  whine  about  their  misery,  for  they  were  not 
miserable. 

I,  for  one,  however,  understand  that  material  well- 
being  is  not  the  greatest  thing  in  Ufe,  and  that  the 
satisfaction  of  national  sentiment,  racial  pride,  liberty 
of  self-government,  are  desires  of  the  human  heart 
stronger  and  nobler,  if  nobly  expressed,  than  wealth 
or  comfort.  The  Irish  were  still  denied  their  old  claim 
to  rule  themselves  as  a  separate  people,  and  material 
progress  did  not  weaken,  but  rather  strengthened,  their 
passion  for  political  liberty;  and  the  European  war, 
which  intensified  all  ideals,  hopes,  fears,  hatreds,  and 

292 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

other  emotions  of  men  and  women  in  the  whole  world, 
caused  a  profound  stirring  up  of  passion  in  Ireland. 


VI 

Before  this  happened,  other  things  had  happened 
which  were  fatal  links  in  the  chain  of  Irish  tragedy.  A 
Home  Rule  Act  (limited  and  imperfect,  it  is  true)  had 
at  last  been  placed  upon  the  statute  book,  after  more 
than  half  a  century  of  pohtical  strife,  and  Ulster  had 
refused  to  acknowledge  it. 

The  history  of  that  half  century  of  struggle  in  the 
House  of  Commons  by  a  solid  block  of  Irish  members, 
under  leaders  Hke  Parnell  and  Redmond,  preceding 
that  Act  by  Asquith's  government,  is  too  long  and 
complicated  to  summarize,  and  is  anyhow  the  record 
of  a  dismal  and  depressing  drama.  The  Irish  Nation- 
alists had  to  fight  against  a  dead  weight  of  English 
prejudice  throughout  the  Victorian  era,  which  seemed 
invincible  in  its  smugness  and  self-complacency,  un- 
breakable in  its  intolerance  and  arrogance.  The  Queen 
herself  symbolized,  in  a  royal  way,  the  narrow  bigotry 
of  the  English  middle  class,  which  only  broadened  and 
mellowed  to  Liberal  ideas  when  the  Education  Act  of 
1870  and  other  enlightening  influences  had  begun  to 
operate.  The  new  imperialism  of  the  Cecil  Rhodes 
type,  popularized  by  Kipling,  made  a  political  creed 
by  Chamberlain,  helped  later  to  create  an  atmosphere 
of  intolerance  toward  Irish  claims  for  self-government. 
Religious  prejudice  acted  also  against  Irish  interests, 
for  the  Protestant  cry  of  "No  Popery"  still  had  power 
to  stir  popular  passion  and  to  raise  votes  against  any 
concessions  to  a  Catholic  people,  lest  Home  Rule  should 
spell  Rome  Rule,  with  the  Inquisition  at  work  again, 
with  new  Bartholomew  massacres,  with  Jesuits  in  dis- 
guise  conspiring   against   the    Protestant   Crown,    and 

293 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

with  all  the  bogeys  which  still  lurked  in  the  memory 
of  Puritan  England  from  the  days  when  the  Catholic 
Church  was  regarded  as  "The  Scarlet  Woman"  and 
"The  Whore  of  Babylon." 

Gradually  that  rehgious  bigotry  was  softened  by 
many  influences  which  broke  the  spell  of  Victorianism 
— on  one  side  the  Oxford  Movement,  with  its  return  to 
Catholic  mysticism;  on  the  other  side  the  wave  of 
agnosticism  reflected  in  such  popular  books  as  Robert 
Elsmere  by  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward,  the  progress  of 
science,  and  a  wider  knowledge  of  history.  The  group 
of  Irish  members  in  the  House  of  Commons  were  defeated 
decade  after  decade  by  that  solid  wall  of  prejudice  still 
existing  in  the  mass  psychology  of  mid-Victorian 
England;  and  their  own  faction  fights,  their  utter  dis- 
regard of  English  sensibilities,  their  own  fanaticism,  and 
the  Celtic  temperament  which  no  Englishman  could 
even  dimly  apprehend,  destroyed  their  political  strategy 
time  and  time  again.  Not  even  Gladstone's  oratory, 
the  fire  of  his  spirit,  his  wizard  spell  over  the  imagina- 
tion of  Liberal  minds,  could  break  down  the  sinister 
fears  which  belonged  to  the  old  Conservative  instincts 
of  the  English  people  in  their  dealings  with  CathoHc 
Ireland.  Yet  by  a  curious  paradox,  due  to  a  privilege 
of  caste  stronger  than  religious  sympathy,  the  English 
Catholics  of  the  old  aristocracy  were  as  bitterly  hostile 
to  Irish  Home  Rule  as  the  Protestants  of  the  most 
Puritan  type. 

One  fatality  dogged  the  efforts  of  the  Irish  Nation- 
alists to  obtain  victory  by  political  pressure.  Over 
and  over  again  their  chances  were  spoiled  by  the  acts 
of  crime  committed  by  secret  gangs  in  Ireland.  Im- 
patient of  political  strategy,  stirred  by  passionate 
incitements  of  Irish  exiles  in  America,  young  Irishmen 
adopted  terrorism  as  their  weapon,  and  always  it  was 
double-edged,    hurting    their    own    cause    most.    The 

294 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

hedgerow  murders  and  sinister  conspiracies  of  Moon- 
lighters and  Fenians  hardened  the  EngHsh  mind  against 
any  measure  of  Home  Rule,  made  them  stubborn  against 
a  plea  for  Hberty  by  a  people  who  used  American  dollars 
to  organize  assassination,  cattle  maiming,  and  boy- 
cotting. 

Another  source  of  anger  and  of  political  hatred  against 
the  Irish  Nationalists  was  the  manner  in  which  their 
block  in  the  House  of  Commons  used  their  voting  powers 
as  a  threat  or  as  a  bribe  to  English  political  parties. 
The  Irish  vote  could  turn  out  a  government  or  wreck  a 
bill  which  had  nothing  to  do  with  Irish  interests,  and 
with  relentless  strategy  the  Irish  leaders  made  use  of 
this  power  whenever  it  suited  their  purpose,  utterly 
indifferent  to  the  welfare  of  the  English  people.  That, 
at  least,  was  a  nagging  thought  among  our  politicians, 
though  it  is  doubtful  whether  the  Irish  party  thwarted 
any  important  measures  which  lay  outside  the  interests 
of  Ireland.  Be  that  as  it  may,  there  were  many  people 
who  cried  out  to  be  rid  of  that  hostile,  alien  group  on 
the  Irish  benches,  with  their  cynical  wit  and  mocking 
laughter,  so  that  we  ourselves  might  enjoy  Home  Rule 
for  England. 

It  was  John  Redmond,  as  leader  of  the  Nationalists, 
who  at  last  succeeded  in  securing  a  majority  in  the  House 
of  Commons  for  Irish  Home  Rule,  so  winning  victory, 
it  seemed,  after  the  long  and  uphill  struggle. 

That  was  after  something  like  a  political  revolution 
in  England,  which,  with  the  help  of  the  Irish  votes,  had 
destroyed  the  veto  of  the  House  of  Lords  by  pressure 
brought  to  bear  upon  the  King  to  create  sufficient  peers 
to  overthrow  them  if  they  did  not  surrender  their  own 
power.  They  surrendered  at  the  eleventh  hour,  and  as 
one  of  the  first  fruits  of  victory  for  the  Liberals  in  the 
Commons,  the  Home  Rule  bill  became  law.  But  two 
things  happened  to  spill  these  fruits  out  of  the  basket 

295 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

of  hope.     One  was  the  menace  of  civil  war,  the  other 
was  the  coming  of  the  Great  War. 


VII 

Looking  back  at  the  recent  horrors  in  Ireland,  it 
seems  to  me,  and  to  most  men  I  know,  unless  they  are 
blinded  by  passion,  that  they  are  directly  due  to  what 
happened  in  Ulster  before  the  passing  of  the  Home  Rule 
bill.  What  happened  there  was  the  raking  up  of  old 
passions  and  bigotries  by  men  like  Carson  and  F.  E. 
Smith  (who  is  now  Lord  Birkenhead  and  Lord  Chan- 
cellor of  England),  and  the  public  organization  of  a 
rebel  army  whose  avowed  purpose  was  to  resist  an  Act 
of  ParUament  by  force  of  arms,  to  defy  the  King's 
authority,  and,  if  need  be,  the  King's  troops.  It  is 
true  that  they  proclaimed  their  loyalty,  but  one  banner 
which  flaunted  across  a  Belfast  street  was  not  con- 
vincing in  its  patriotism.  It  said,  "We  would  rather 
be  ruled  by  the  Kaiser  than  by  the  Pope  of  Rome." 
In  view  of  what  happened  on  August  4,  1914,  that  refer- 
ence to  the  Kaiser  was  at  least  unfortunate.  It  is  also 
hard  now  to  remember  that  the  rifles  which  were  smug- 
gled into  Ulster  for  the  arming  of  the  volunteers  were 
mostly  of  German  manufacture. 

I  saw  a  good  deal  of  Belfast  in  those  days,  and  what 
I  saw  I  did  not  like.  I  saw  an  ugly  intolerance  of  mind 
among  the  leaders  of  the  Orange  lodges  toward  their 
fellow  Irishmen  of  Catholic  faith,  which  startled  me 
by  its  mingled  quality  of  sheer  brutality  and  religious 
fanaticism.  One  decade  of  the  twentieth  century 
had  passed  (and  the  European  war  had  not  yet  come 
with  new  revelations  of  human  cruelty),  yet  in  this  era 
of  enlightenment  and  civilization  men  of  good  stand- 
ing, ministers  of  religion,  great  lawyers  of  the  English 
bar   were  talking  stufi^  which  might  have  been  uttered, 

296 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

in  better  language,  by  Oliver  Cromwell  himself — stuff 
belonging  to  the  old,  dark  bigotries  of  the  Thirty  Years* 
War  or  the  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic;  stuff  of  igno- 
rance, of  hatred,  and  of  cruelty  which  left  me  aghast, 
because  I  believed  we  had  passed  beyond  all  that.  This 
verbosity  of  intolerance  was  translated  into  acts,  as  I 
saw  with  my  own  eyes  in  back  streets  of  Belfast  and  in 
the  neighborhood  of  Queen's  Island,  where  Protestant 
laborers  fell  upon  Catholic  workingmen  and  kicked 
them  to  death,  or  bruised  and  battered  them  so  that 
the  hospitals  were  busy  with  these  casualties.  At  that 
time,  anyhow,  the  Catholic  Irish  were  not  the  aggres- 
sors, nor  in  places  where  there  were  Protestant  minori- 
ties did  they  take  vengeance  by  reprisals. 

In  March  of  1914  a  large  consignment  of  arms  was 
landed  at  Larne  without  let  or  hindrance  from  govern- 
ment officials,  thereby  persuading  John  Redmond  to 
encourage  recruiting  of  his  own  volunteers.  But  when 
in  July  the  Irish  volunteers  tried  to  distribute  arms 
they  were  opposed  by  troops  who  afterward  fired  on  an 
unarmed  crowd  in  Dubhn. 

After  the  swearing  of  the  "Covenant,"  the  drilling 
of  battalions,  and  the  establishment  of  a  "Provisional 
Government"  by  the  Ulster  leaders,  there  happened 
the  incident  at  the  Curragh  when  Gough  and  other 
cavalry  officers  gave  clear  notice  that  they  would  refuse 
to  obey  orders  if  they  were  called  upon  to  disarm  the 
Ulster  volunteers.  If  any  man  was  a  rebel,  Carson  was 
a  rebel.  If  any  body  of  men  were  conspiring  with  armed 
forces  to  defeat  the  authority  of  the  Crown  and  Parlia- 
ment, those  men  were  the  Ulster  volunteers.  Yet  no 
action  was  taken  against  Sir  Edward  Carson  or  his 
riflemen,  though  a  search  was  made  for  arm.s  in  southern 
Ireland  when  the  Catholics  raised  their  own  volunteers 
in  defense  of  the  threats  of  war  by  Ulster. 

The  Great  War  came,  and  for  a  time  washed  out  all 

2U  297 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

smaller  strife  in  a  sea  of  blood.  The  cavalry  officers  of 
the  Curragh  camp  went  out  first  of  all  to  meet  the  Uhlans 
of  Germany.  Irishmen  of  north  and  south,  Protestants 
and  Catholics,  offered  themselves  to  defend  their 
country  against  the  common  enemy. 

"I  say  to  the  government,"  proclaimed  John  Red- 
mond, "that  they  may  to-morrow  withdraw  every  one 
of  their  troops  from  Ireland.  Ireland  will  be  defended 
by  her  armed  sons  from  invasion,  and  for  that  purpose 
the  armed  Catholics  in  the  south  will  be  only  too  glad  to 
join  with  the   armed   Protestant  Ulster  men." 

It  was  the  great  chance  to  end  the  historic  feud  be- 
tween Great  Britain  and  Ireland.  Greater  men  than 
we  had  would  have  seized  it,  calling  upon  the  heroic 
spirit  of  Ireland,  with  a  full  and  fair  pledge  of  self-govern- 
ment as  a  sister  nation.  Instead,  pettifogging  minds 
at  the  War  Office  got  to  work,  ignoring  or  thwarting  all 
plans  of  Irish  recruiting  in  the  south  and  west,  and 
playing  up  to  Ulster  as  the  only  "loyalists."  The 
Catholic  Irish  wanted  to  fight  in  their  own  brigades, 
under  their  own  flag,  and  with  their  priests  as  chaplains. 
Why  not,  in  God's  name?  Instead,  Irish  volunteers 
were  drafted  into  English  battalions,  Irish  gentlemen 
were  not  allowed  to  command  their  own  men.  All 
offers  of  raising  bodies  of  Irish  youth  were  discouraged. 
Even  Lloyd  George  admitted  afterward  that  he  was 
aghast  at  the  methods  adopted  toward  Irish  recruiting, 
and  confessed  that  it  seemed  as  if  "malignancy"  had 
been  at  work.  He  did  not  add  that  those  sinister  in- 
fluences were  the  work  of  his  own  colleagues. 

The  first  fires  of  enthusiasm  were  damped  down,  and 
died  out.  They  were  put  clean  out  for  the  Catholic 
Irish  when  Sir  Edward  Carson,  their  avowed  enemy,  the 
leader  of  the  Ulster  volunteers,  the  rebel,  was  made  a 
Cabinet  Minister,  with  a  seat  in  the  War  Council.  It 
seemed  to  them  a  deliberate  affront,  a  public  declaration 

298 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

of  partisanship  with  those  who  had  sworn  to  resist 
Home  Rule.  On  our  side  it  was  a  colossal  blunder, 
Worse  than  a  crime,  and  showed  an  ignorance  of  Irish 
psychology  only  equal  to  the  German  ignorance  of 
our  own. 

Meanwhile  a  hundred  thousand  Catholic  Irish  were 
fighting  for  the  liberty  of  civilization  and  for  the  safety 
of  Great  Britain.  At  first  they  believed  that  they  were 
fighting  also  for  the  liberty  of  their  own  little  isle,  but 
gradually  that  belief  left  them  and  they  w^ere  sadder 
and  wiser  men.  Yet  they  went  on  fighting,  gallantly, 
desperately,  in  the  Dardanelles,  on  the  western  front, 
in  Palestine,  cut  off  from  their  own  folk,  reinforced  by 
drafts  from  EngHsh  battalions,  commanded  by  ojfficers 
not  of  their  faith  or  race. 

I  was  often  with  the  troops  of  the  i6th  Irish  Divi- 
sion in  France  and  Planders,  because  I  wanted  to  give 
them  what  honor  I  could,  by  recording  their  valor  and 
their  loyalty  at  a  time  when  they  felt  isolated  from  their 
own  folk  and  from  ours.  They  played  their  pipes  for 
me  in  old  French  barns  outside  of  Arras,  and  these 
Irish  lads  made  whimsical  jokes  about  the  Jerry  boys, 
as  they  called  the  Germans,  and  about  their  way  of 
life  and  death.  I  remember  one  boy  sitting  in  the  straw 
below  the  rafters  of  a  barn,  who  told  me  in  a  fine  brogue 
that  the  place  swarmed  with  rats  who  sat  up  on  their 
hind  legs  and  sang  "God  save  Ireland" — "And  sure," 
he  said,  "it's  the  truth  I'm  after  telling  you!"  I  saw 
them  go  into  battle  at  Guillemont  and  Guinchy  "when 
the  Jerry  boys  ran  so  fast  you  couldn't  see  their  tails 
for  dust,"  and  come  out  again  across  the  shell-ravaged 
fields  through  the  roar  of  guns,  with  all  their  officers 
gone,  and  sergeants  or  corporals  leading  little  groups  of 
tired,  staggering  men  who  were  the  few  that  were  left 
out  of  the  strong  companies  that  had  marched  into  that 
hell  on  earth.    I  stood  by  the  side  of  their  brigadier, 

299 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

not  an  Irishman,  but  a  lover  of  these  boys  in  his  com- 
mand, and  the  tears  ran  down  his  face  as  he  shouted 
words  of  praise  to  them. 

"Bravo,  Connaughts!  Bravo,  Munsters!  You  did 
damn  well,  Dublins!" 

At  the  sight  of  him  standing  there,  at  those  words  of 
his,  they  pulled  themselves  up,  turned  eyes  left,  were 
glad  of  this  tribute  to  a  heroism  not  surpassed  in  the 
"war  to  end  war,"  as  we  called  it  in  our  simplicity. 

The  Irish  division  did  not  get  a  fair  deal.  It  was 
left  in  the  trenches  month  after  month,  shifted  from 
one  part  of  the  line  to  another,  without  a  rest,  and  in 
August  of  1917,  in  Flanders,  up  against  the  German 
pill  boxes  at  "Beck  House"  and  "Borry  Farm"  it  was 
just  a  massacre.  They  were  alongside  the  Ulster  men, 
who  shared  their  sacrifice,  and  with  whom  they  were 
comrades,  forgetful,  there,  in  France  and  Flanders,  of 
political  and  religious  feuds,  but  Irishmen  together. 
Left  for  three  weeks  in  ditches  of  death,  under  a  cease- 
less storm  of  German  gunfire,  each  of  these  two  Irish 
divisions  lost  nearly  two  thousand  men  and  over  a 
hundred  and  fifty  oflScers  before  they  were  sent  "over 
the  top"  in  a  great  assault.  And  then  without  mercy 
for  their  losses  they  were  pushed  into  a  battle  which 
cost  them  another  two  thousand  men  for  each  division, 
and  almost  the  last  of  their  officers.  Some  of  their 
battahons  lost  64,  and  even  66  per  cent  of  their 
fighting  strength.  Some  companies  were  almost  anni- 
hilated. It  was  not  war.  It  was  a  murder  of  men 
who  fought  to  the  extreme  limits  of  human  heroism 
in  impossible  conditions  and  in  obedience  to  outrageous 
orders. 

For  General  Hickey,  their  divisional  commander,  I 
had  a  warm  regard.  He  had  a  charming  Irish  way 
and  was  proud  of  his  men,  but  I  think  he  failed  in  getting 

fair  play  for  them  and  allowed  them  to  be  used  too 

300 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

ruthlessly  by  our  High  Command.  Both  divisions 
were  remade  by  scraping  up  drafts  of  men  from  conva- 
lescent camps  and  from  English  depots.  In  the  German 
offensive  of  191 8  they  were  holding  the  line  in  the  Fifth 
Army  front,  and  fought  again  until  they  were  almost 
destroyed.  On  the  outskirts  of  Amiens,  after  a  terrible 
week  against  the  overwhelming  tide,  General  Nugent, 
commanding  the  Ulster  division,  was  asked  by  a 
French  general  coming  up  to  our  relief,  to  make  another 
attack  while  the  French  troops  detrained.  General 
Nugent's  answer  to  the  message  was  a  revelation  of 
his  tragedy.  "Tell  your  general,"  he  said,  "that  I 
have  only  three  hundred  men  who  can  stand  up" — 
three  hundred  out  of  a  whole  division! — "but  they  will 
attack  again." 

Any  man  who  denies  the  valor  of  the  Irish  in  the 
war  is  a  liar.  They  had  not  the  same  discipline  as  the 
English  (their  temperament  was  different),  some  of 
their  officers  were  not  so  well  trained,  but  their  courage 
was  magnificent  and  their  spirit  heroic.  As  an  English- 
man, I  am  glad  to  pay  them  this  tribute  in  truth  and 
honesty,  and  especially  because,  in  Ireland,  that  re- 
belHon  in  Easter  week  of  1916,  before  the  battles  of 
the  Somme,  before  their  agony  in  those  fields  and  in 
Flanders,  cut  them  off  from  their  own  people  and  put 
them  to  a  supreme  test  of  loyalty. 


VIII 

For  that  rebellion  there  is  no  excuse.  Not  even  the 
tragic  heritage  of  Irish  history,  nor  our  own  stupidities 
in  dealing  with  a  temperamental  people,  nor  Carson's 
sinister  influence,  palliates  the  black  treachery  of  that 
act.  It  was  treachery  not  only  against  the  English 
people,  who,  whatever  the   acts  of  their  government, 

had   been   patient  with   Ireland,   generously   inclined, 

301 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

but  treachery  to  civilization  itself,  to  our  French  allies, 
to  the  whole  code  of  honor.  The  enemy  was  desper- 
ately strong  against  us.  We  were  hard  pressed,  and  the 
Irish  troops  themselves,  as  I  have  told,  were  being  mowed 
down  by  German  gun  fire  and  German  machine-gun 
bullets.  If  Germany  had  won,  more  would  have  gone 
down  than  England.  Irish  liberty  would  have  gone 
down  with  ours.  Europe  would  have  been  Prussianized, 
and  there  would  have  been  no  mercy  under  German 
Pickelhauben  for  Irish  rebels.  The  Prussian  does  not 
believe  in  rebels  when  they  have  served  his  purpose. 
He  has  a  short  way  with  them.  The  British  Empire 
would  have  been  broken  up,  and  the  ruin  of  England 
would  not  have  helped  Ireland,  but  would  have  made  her 
poverty-stricken  with  us,  and  fellow  slaves  under  the 
yoke  of  a  real  tyranny.  The  Irish  rebellion  was  mad- 
ness as  well  as  badness. 

Of  the  compHcity  of  the  Irish  conspirators  with  our 
enemy  there  is  no  doubt.  Roger  Casement  was  not 
the  only  man  in  correspondence  with  Germany.  Through 
Irish-Americans  and  Count  BernstorfF  in  Washington, 
the  leaders  of  the  rebelUon  were  in  direct  touch  with  the 
German  government.  Their  whole  plans  were  based 
upon  German  assistance,  as  P.  H.  Pearse  admitted  in  a 
letter  written  the  night  before  his  execution: 

The  help  I  expected  from  Germany  failed;  the  British  sank  the 
ships. 

Judge  Cohalan  in  the  United  States  requested  Count 
Bernstorff  to  forward  the  following  message  to  the 
German  Foreign  Office: 

The  Irish  revolt  can  only  succeed  if  assisted  by  Germany.  Other- 
wise England  will  be  able  to  crush  it,  although  after  a  severe  struggle. 
Assistance  required.  There  should  be  an  air  raid  on  England  and  a 
naval  attack  timed  to  coincide  with  the  rising,  followed  by  a  landing  of 
troops  and  munitions  and  also  of  some  officers,  perhaps  from  a  warship. 

202 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

It  might  then  be  possible  to  close  the  Irish  harbors  against  England, 
set  up  bases  for  submarines,  and  cut  off  food  export  to  England.  A 
successful  rising  may  decide  the  war. 

John  Devoy  was  the  leader  of  the  revolutionary  plot 
in  the  United  States,  and  in  close  and  constant  commu- 
nication with  the  German  ambassador  at  Washington. 
On  February  i8,  1916,  Count  Bernstorff  attached  the 
following  message  surreptitiously  to  a  note  regarding 
the  Lusitania  negotiations,  sanctioned  and  passed 
through  by  the  State  Department  of  the  American 
government : 

The  Irish  leader,  John  Devoy,  informs  me  that  rising  is  to  begin 
in  Ireland  on  Easter  Sunday.  Please  send  arms  to  (arrive  at) 
Limerick,  west  coast  of  Ireland,  between  Good  Friday  and  Easter 
Sunday.  To  put  it  oflF  longer  is  impossible.  Let  me  know  if  help 
may  be  expected  from  Germany. 

Bernstorff. 

There  is  one  mitigating  fact  in  the  indictment  of  the 
Irish  people  regarding  the  rebellion  which  broke  out  in 
Dublin  during  that  Easter  week  and  led  to  the  death 
of  many  English  soldiers,  many  Irish  boys,  hundreds 
of  casualties  on  both  sides,  the  destruction  of  the  best 
part  of  Dublin  from  artillery  fire,  and  the  abomination 
of  martial  law.  Its  outbreak  was  bitterly  condemned 
and  resented  by  the  majority  of  Irish  citizens,  who  re- 
garded it,  for  the  first  day  or  two  at  least,  as  an  act  of 
criminal  madness.  From  many  sources  of  information, 
English  as  v/ell  as  Irish,  I  have  evidence  of  that.  But 
when  its  failure  was  assured  and  large  numbers  of  Irish 
lads  and  their  leaders  were  surrounded  by  superior 
forces  and  strong  artillery,  without  a  dog's  chance  of 
escape,  sentiment  was  intensely  stirred  and  every 
Irish  heart  bled  at  the  thought  of  their  inevitable  death 
unless  they  surrendered.  Whatever  the  original  folly 
or  crime,  all  people  must  feel  like  that  for  their  fellow 

303 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

countrymen,  as  we  felt  in  the  time  of  the  Jameson 
raid.  National  sentiment,  pity,  horror,  and  then  a  flame 
of  hatred  swept  over  Ireland  when,  after  the  rebellion, 
the  Irish  prisons  were  crowded  with  captives  to  the 
number  of  one  thousand  eight  hundred  and  forty, 
and  fifteen  of  their  leaders  were  picked  out  for  the 
Bloody  Assizes  under  General  Maxwell,  sentenced  to 
death,  and  executed.  According  to  all  laws  of  all 
countries,  those  executions  were  justified.  In  compar- 
ison with  what  other  countries  would  have  done — 
Germany,  France,  even  the  United  States — I  think — 
we  were  mild  in  punishment.  But  if  we  had  been  more 
merciful  we  should  have  been  more  wise.  Those  men 
like  Pearse,  Macdonagh,  and  Connolly  were  not  evil 
men  in  their  nature,  though  they  had  done  a  mad,  bad 
thing.  They  were  men  of  lofty  ideals,  patriots  and 
visionaries,  though  grievously  misguided  by  fanaticism. 
We  might  have  known  that  to  execute  them  would 
make  martyrs  of  them,  and  that  the  spirit  of  the  Irish 
people  would  be  flung  into  allegiance  with  the  extrem- 
ists by  their  tragic  deaths,  by  their  last  words  of  love 
for  Ireland,  by  the  tranquil  courage  with  which  they  went 
to  execution.  It  is  knowledge  of  psychology  which 
makes  great  statesmen  and  leaders.  A  man  like  Gen- 
eral Maxwell  has  as  much  knowledge  of  psychology  as  a 
German  drill  sergeant.  He  has  the  brass-hat  brain. 
Our  own  statesmen  were  not  big  enough  for  generosity, 
not  brave  enough  to  risk  an  error  on  the  side  of  mercy. 
They  went  by  the  book  of  the  old  code  of  law,  and 
stood  by  "the  need  of  justice. "  Any  schoolboy  might 
have  quoted  Shakespeare  to  them  for  a  text — 

The  quality  of  mercy  is  not  strained  .  .  . 

•  •••••• 

And  earthly  power  doth  then  show  likest  God's, 
When  mercy  seasons  justice.  .  .  . 

304 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

From  the  lowest  point  of  view,  the  low  cunning  of 
political  strategy,  we  should  have  done  better  to  have 
kept  those  men  in  prison  for  a  while,  to  have  treated 
them  with  chivalry,  as  now  and  again  in  the  past  English 
kings  treated  rebellious  subjects,  and  then  have  called 
to  the  heart  of  Ireland  for  loyalty  on  generous  terms. 
So  General  Botha  dealt  with  the  rebelHon  of  De  Wet 
in  the  early  days  of  the  war.  For  the  leaders  there 
were  short  terms  of  imprisonment,  then  a  general 
amnesty.  "We  want  to  put  that  out  of  our  memories," 
he  said.  That  way  might  have  failed  in  Ireland,  for 
the  Irish  are  a  Celtic  people  and  many  of  them  are  not 
easily  forgetful  of  what  they  think  is  unfair  and  are  cynical 
of  generous  dealing,  which  they  mistake  for  weakness, 
and  incurably  suspicious.  Mercy  might  have  failed  to 
win  their  thanks.     But  lack  of  mercy  was  bound  to  fail. 

It  did  fail  most  horribly.  The  most  moderate  men 
and  women  in  Ireland  revolted  against  the  "martyrdom" 
of  the  Sinn  Fein  leaders,  and  the  Irish  Republican  Army, 
as  the  Irish  volunteers  now  called  themselves,  received 
recruits  from  the  great  body  of  Irish  youth.  On  the 
western  front  many  Irish  soldiers,  still  fighting  for  us, 
dedicated  themselves  anew  to  Irish  freedom,  and 
after  the  war,  if  they  had  the  luck,  or  misfortune,  to 
live,  joined  the  ranks  of  the  rebel  forces. 

Abortive  attempts  were  made  by  Mr.  Asquith,  in  the 
last  months  of  his  office  as  Prime  Minister,  to  reshape 
the  government  of  Ireland,  and  he  appointed  Lloyd 
George  to  negotiate  with  John  Redmond  and  Sir  Edward 
Carson,  in  order  that  the  first  principles  of  a  new  bill 
might  be  agreed  upon.  Redmond  obtained  a  written 
document  which  oucHned  the  government  proposals, 
for  setting  up  an  Irish  Parliament,  with  a  responsible 
Irish  executive,  and  arranging  to  leave  out  the  six 
counties  of  Ulster  during  the  war,  upon  the  ending  of 
which  the  problem  of  partition  would  be  raised  again 

30s 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

before  a  council  of  the  Empire.  In  the  meantime  the 
original  number  of  Irish  members  would  sit  at  West- 
minster. These  proposals  were  carried  at  a  Nation- 
alist convention,  and  accepted  by  the  Ulster  Council 
in  June,  1916.  Later,  however,  Lord  Lansdowne,  as 
leader  of  the  Unionist  peers,  refused  to  agree  to  the 
terms  of  Redmond's  document,  Sir  Edward  Carson 
interpreted  the  government  promises  as  meaning  the 
permanent  partition  of  Ireland,  and  Bonar  Law  repu- 
diated the  binding  nature  of  the  pledge  given  to  the 
Irish  leader,  so  the  poor  John  Redmond  knew  that  his 
own  people  would  have  their  worst  suspicions  confirmed 
and  would  repudiate  his  leadership. 

The  war  was  still  going  on  and  the  minds  of  people 
in  England,  Scotland,  and  Wales  had  no  room  for  polit- 
ical strife  in  Ireland,  but  were  obsessed,  and  agonized, 
and  deadened  by  the  continuing  and  increasing  slaugh- 
ter in  France  and  Flanders,  without  a  hope  or  illusion 
left  of  rapid  victory.  In  spite  of  tremendous  battles, 
with  their  long  death  rolls,  our  generals  did  not  seem 
to  get  in  sight  of  any  promised  land.  They  called  for 
more  men,  and  still  more,  for  the  dreadful  sacrifice. 
Intrigue  was  rife  at  home,  because  of  long  disappoint- 
ment, and  criticism  of  the  conduct  of  the  war,  leading 
to  behef  that  a  change  of  leadership  might  quicken  the 
chance  of  victory.  By  a  political  intrigue  in  which 
Bonar  Law  and  Lloyd  George  were  the  principals,  with 
a  Canadian  journalist  and  pubhcity  man — the  present 
Lord  Beaverbrook — as  chief  wirepuller — Asquith  was 
unseated  and  Lloyd  George  became  Prime  Minister  of 
the  Coalition,  dependent  on  the  support  of  Carson  and 
Bonar  Law,  with  their  Orange  fanaticism  still  unabated, 
and  on  the  backing  of  press  favorites  to  whom  he  prom- 
ised largesse  in  the  future,  which  later  he  richly  paid,  so 
that  Fleet  Street  is  now  paved  w^ith  coronets  and  its 

purheus  infested  with  barons. 

306 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

Lloyd  George  had  great  qualities  of  leadership  which 
might  have  made  him  more  powerful  than  those  who  kept 
the  rein  upon  his  finer  instincts.  He  had  imagination, 
sympathy,  generous  impulses,  splendid  audacity,  re- 
vealed from  time  to  time  in  spite  of  all  those  hide-bound 
pettifogging  brains  which  surrounded  him  closely  and 
watchfully  and  suspiciously,  and  whose  power  over 
other  people  of  their  kind  was  able  to  thwart  him  or 
change  his  direction,  whenever  he  tried  to  be  free  of  them. 

So  it  was  in  his  dealings  with  Ireland.  His  first 
action  was  maganimous  and  he  set  free  large  numbers 
of  young  Irishmen  who  had  been  imprisoned  since  the 
rebellion  of  Easter  week  in  1916,  though  he  refused  to 
annul  the  sentences  of  those  who  were  in  penal  servitude. 
But  when  Sinn  Fein  began  to  win  by-elections — 
Count  Plunkett  being  elected  for  Roscommon  in  Feb- 
ruary 1917 — he  allowed  himself  to  be  influenced  by  the 
fears  of  his  supporters  and  gave  his  consent  to  a  new 
campaign  of  coercion,  with  wholesale  arrests,  house-to- 
house  searches,  imprisonment  without  trial,  and  all 
the  rigors  of  military  rule.  In  the  House  of  Commons 
Major  Willie  Redmond  made  a  moving  and  noble 
appeal  for  peaceful  settlement  by  a  quick  and  generous 
measure  of  self-government  for  Ireland.  "In  the  name 
of  God,  we  here,  who  are  perhaps  about  to  die,  ask  you 
to  do  that  which  largely  induced  us  to  leave  our  homes." 

I  read  that  speech  of  Major  Redmond's,  much  stirred 
by  its  pathos,  when  I  was  recording  the  daily  routine  of 
the  war,  and  three  months  later,  when  I  went  among 
the  Irish  battalions  on  a  great  day  of  battle  at  Messines, 
I  remembered  his  words,  when  an  Irish  soldier  told  me 
that  "Major  WilHe"  had  been  killed  not  far  from  where 
I  stood,  by  Wytschaete  Wood.  A  few  days  later  I  was 
present  at  his  graveside  in  a  convent  garden  when 
soldiers  of  Protestant  Ulster  and  CathoHc  Ireland  fired 
the  last  salute  above  his  dust.     He  had  died  Uke  many 

307 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

of  his  comrades  in  the  vain  hope  that  by  their  loyalty 
to  the  Empire  Ireland  might  gain  her  heart's -desire. 

But  in  Ireland  and  in  England  there  was  no  reconciling 
spirit.  Less  in  Ireland  than  in  England,  then,  for  once 
again  prisoners  were  released — among  them  being  De 
Valera,  afterward  appointed  leader  of  Sinn  Fein  and 
President  of  the  *' Irish  Republic" — and  when  an  Irish 
convention  was  summoned  to  discuss  a  plan  for  the 
self-government  of  Ireland,  within  the  Empire,  by  all 
parties  of  the  Irish  people,  Sinn  Fein  refused  to  send 
representatives,  having  nailed  its  RepubHcan  flag  to  the 
mast. 

All  through  the  autumn  and  winter  of  1917  the  Irish 
people  became  more  and  more  skeptical  of  the  conven- 
tion, as  news  reached  them  that  Ulster  was  as  irrecon- 
cilable as  ever,  and  would  not  abate  a  jot  of  her  claims 
to  separation,  for  the  sake  of  national  unity.  Yet 
under  the  chairmanship  of  Sir  Horace  Plunkett,  a  wise, 
devoted,  and  patriotic  Irishman,  the  convention  repre- 
sented all  shades  of  opinion  in  Ireland,  apart  from  Sinn 
Fein.  Among  its  members  were  five  Nationalists,  five 
Ulster  Unionists,  three  southern  Unionists,  four  Cath- 
olic bishops,  two  bishops  of  the  Church  of  Ireland, 
thirty-one  chairmen  of  county  councils,  four  mayors, 
eight  urban  councilors,  seven  labor  representatives, 
and  such  great  Irishmen  as  "A.  E.,"  Sir  Horace  Windle, 
Lord  MacDowell,  Lord  Desert,  and  Doctor  MahafFy, 
provost  of  Trinity  College. 

They  could  not  agree.  Before  the  end,  John  Redmond 
resigned,  and  died  of  soul  shock.  Yet  its  report  pre- 
sented to  Lloyd  George  the  faith  and  convictions  of 
men  who  knew  the  psychology  of  their  countrymen  and 
who  in  many  solemn  and  inspiring  words  proclaimed 
the  age-long  aspirations  of  Ireland  to  political  liberty. 
They  were  mostly  agreed  to  a  Federal  scheme  which 
would  give  Ireland  a  constitution  within  the  Empire, 

308 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

and  there  is  hardly  a  doubt  that  even  then  a  full  promise 
of  Dominion  Home  Rule  for  Ireland,  with  a  temporary 
arrangement  for  Ulster,  would  have  received  the  alle- 
giance of  the  great  majority  of  Irish  people,  if  it  had  been 
made  without  reservation  and  as  a  great  act  of  recon- 
cihation  and  justice  by  the  British  government.  But 
the  British  government  ignored  the  points  of  agreement 
in  the  report,  the  common  bond  of  national  sentiment 
that  united  all  but  the  Ulster  group,  and  Lloyd  George 
put  all  the  work  of  the  convention  on  one  side,  as  a 
failure  from  which  there  was  nothing  to  be  learned.  He 
learned  nothing,  not  even  the  unanimous  conviction  of 
the  subcommittee  on  national  defense  that,  after  all 
that  had  happened,  there  could  be  no  conscription  in 
Ireland  without  the  consent  of  an  Irish  Parliament. 
After  the  German  offensive  of  1918  he  announced  that 
conscription  would  be  extended  to  Ireland,  and  there 
was  not  a  single  party  in  that  island,  hardly  an  indi- 
vidual, who  did  not  regard  that  statement  as  the  final 
breaking  of  all  pledges  and  as  an  outrageous  insult 
to  Irish  pride.  For  as  a  people  they  would  not  allow 
their  men  to  be  taken  without  the  consent  of  their  own 
National  Assembly,  as  though  they  were  but  slaves  of 
the  English  who  denied  them  the  rights  of  common 
freedom. 

It  is  hard  for  the  Enghsh  people,  even  now,  to  under- 
stand that  point  of  view.  We  keep  on  harping  on  the 
fact  that  Ireland  "belongs"  to  England.  We  have  in 
our  bones  the  feeUng  that  the  Irish  and  the  Enghsh 
are  blood  relations,  united  under  the  King,  with  the 
same  interests,  the  same  duties,  the  same  loyalties. 
In  the  war,  when  the  best  of  our  manhood  was  being 
sent  to  the  shambles,  it  seemed  black  treachery  or  cow- 
ardice that  Irish  youth  should  escape  scot  free  while 
ours  was  fighting  for  "the  liberty  of  the  world."  Even 
now,  the  majority  of  people  in  England  hold  that  view, 

309 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

and  it  would,  I  think,  be  a  right  view,  if  Ireland  had 
indeed  been  a  partner  with  us  in  the  same  interests,  the 
same  duties,  and  the  same  loyalties.  But  that  was  not 
so.  The  Irish  people  believed  that  we  had  forfeited  our 
right  to  loyalty  by  violating  their  interests,  trampling 
on  their  loyalty,  and  absolving  them  from  all  duty  by 
refusing  their  liberty. 

Again  one  must  go  back  to  the  grim  old  past  and  to 
the  intrigues,  trickeries,  stupidities,  misunderstandings, 
and  irreconcilable  passions  of  present  politics,  to  under- 
stand the  fire  of  indignation  which  swept  over  Ireland 
at  that  threat  of  conscription.  The  Irish  people  rose 
as  one  man  to  resist  it.  At  the  Mansion  House  in 
Dublin  representatives  of  the  Nationalists,  Labor 
party,  Sinn  Fein,  and  all-for-Ireland  group  met  in 
conference,  and  on  April  i8,  1918,  issued  the  following 
declaration: 

Taking  our  stand  on  Ireland's  separate  and  distinct  nation- 
hood, and  affirming  the  principle  of  Hberty  that  the  governments  of 
nations  derive  their  just  powers  from  the  consent  of  the  governed, 
we  deny  the  right  of  the  British  government  or  any  external  authority 
to  impose  compulsory  military  service  in  Ireland  against  the  clearly 
expressed  will  of  the  Irish  people.  The  passing  of  the  Conscription 
bill  by  the  British  House  of  Commons  must  be  regarded  as  a  decla- 
ration of  war  on  the  Irish  nation.  The  alternative  to  accepting  it 
as  such  is  to  surrender  our  liberties  and  to  acknowledge  ourselves 
slaves.  It  is  in  direct  violation  of  the  rights  of  small  nationalities 
to  self-determination,  which  even  the  Prime  Minister  of  England 
■ — now  preparing  to  employ  naked  militarism  and  force  his  Act 
upon  Ireland — himself  announced  as  an  essential  condition  for 
peace  at  the  Peace  Congress.  The  attempt  to  enforce  it  is  an  un- 
warrantable aggression  which  we  call  upon  all  Irishmen  to  resist 
by  the  most  effective  means  at  their  disposal. 

The  Irish  Catholic  bishops  also  issued  a  declaration 
which  contained  the  following  words: 

In  view  especially  of  the  historic  relations  between  the  two 
countries  from  the  very  beginning  up  to  this  moment,  we  consider 

310 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

that  conscription  is  an  oppressive  and  inhuman  law  which  the  Irish 
people  have  a  right  to  resist  by  every  means  that  are  consonant  with 
the  law  of  God. 

The  British  government  did  not  try  to  enforce  con- 
scription in  Ireland  in  face  of  this  storm  of  popular 
indignation,  but  from  that  time  forward  they  turned 
the  screw  of  martial  law  with  ever-increasing  severity. 

In  191 8  there  were  over  eleven  hundred  arrests,  and 
several  Irishmen  had  been  bayoneted  or  shot  for  re- 
sisting arrest  or  trying  to  escape,  while  others  had  died 
in  prison.  Up  to  the  end  of  that  year  only  one  police- 
man had  been  killed.  British  officers,  and  the  Royal 
Irish  Constabulary  acting  under  their  orders,  were 
intolerant  of  Irish  sentiment,  customs,  and  free  speech, 
behaving  with  oppressive  attempts  to  break  the  spirit 
of  the  people,  which  had  the  effect  of  hardening  that 
spirit  into  a  cold  hatred  and  contempt  of  English 
''tyranny."  It  was  tyranny,  as  we  must  confess,  done, 
not  by  the  will  of  the  Enghsh  people,  who  were  utterly 
ignorant  of  what  was  happening  in  Ireland,  owing  to  the 
boycott  of  Irish  news  in  a  bought  or  partisan  press,  but 
by  military  and  police  officials  with  the  narrow  intelli- 
gence, the  pride  in  a  little  brief  authority,  the  exagger- 
ated sense  of  "discipline,"  and  the  spirit  of  "We'll 
teach  'em  what's  what!"  which  are  characteristic 
qualities  of  many  professional  soldiers  and  of  all  police. 

Men  were  arrested  and  imprisoned  for^  "offenses" 
of  the  most  trivial  kind,  or  for  mere  political  opinions. 
For  being  in  possession  of  Sinn  Fein  literature,  for  read- 
ing, or  listening  to,  political  manifestoes  they  were  sen- 
tenced to  years  of  captivity.  Boys  and  girls  were 
imprisoned  for  "whistling  derisively"  at  the  police 
(just  as  French  and  Belgian  boys  and  girls  were  impris- 
oned by  the  Germans  for  mocking  at  the  "goose  step"), 
or  for  singing  old  Irish  songs,  or  speaking  the  Irish  lan- 
guage.   Small  crowds  of  farmers,  with  their  women  folk, 

311 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

in  village  market  places,  were  broken  up,  and  fairs, 
necessary  for  country  life  and  trade,  were  forbidden. 
Not  a  day  passed  without  some  act  of  oppression  or 
intolerance  which  excited  the  anger  of  Irish  folk,  who 
among  all  the  people  in  the  world  are  quickest  to  take 
offense  and  most  remembering  of  insult  and  injustice. 

In  December,  191 8,  there  was  a  general  election  in 
Ireland  which  revealed  the  temper  of  the  people.  The 
Nationalists  of  the  old  Irish  party  were  swept  on  one 
side,  and  only  seven  were  returned.  Sinn  Fein  captured 
seventy-three  seats,  and  pledged  themselves  not  to  sit 
at  Westminster,  but  to  establish  their  own  ParHament, 
called  Dail  Eirann,  to  set  up  their  own  courts  of  justice, 
to  administer  the  republic  they  had  proclaimed.  This 
they  proceeded  to  do  with  an  efficiency,  an  organizing 
genius,  and  a  respect  for  the  rules  of  justice  and  equity 
which  astonished  all  who  had  believed  that  the  Irish 
people  were  incapable  of  ruling  themselves.  The  best 
brains  in  Ireland,  their  most  distinguished  lawyers  and 
magistrates,  served  in  those  courts,  and  settled  innu- 
merable disputes  in  regard  to  land  and  property  with 
advantage  to  the  Irish  people,  according  to  all  the 
evidence  we  have.  But  instead  of  turning  a  blind  eye 
to  a  system  of  training  in  self-government  which  could 
have  been  adapted  to  a  generous  measure  of  Home 
Rule,  still  promised  but  still  delayed,  the  British  govern- 
ment increased  their  military  forces  in  Ireland  and  made 
innumerable  raids,  house-to-house  searches,  and  arrests, 
for  the  purpose  of  breaking  up  the  courts,  until  most 
of  the  RepubHcan  leaders  were  in  prison  or  in  hiding. 

The  Irish  people  had  one  great  hope — illusory  and 
vain.  It  was  that  in  the  Peace  Conference,  when  many 
small  nations  were  being  given  the  right  of  "self-deter- 
mination," and  when,  out  of  the  wreckage  of  old  em- 
pires, new  republics,  like  that  of  Jugo-SIavia  and 
Czecho-Slovakia,    were    being    created,    the    claims    of 

312 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

Ireland  would  be  given  a  hearing,  and  admitted  by  the 
great  Powers,  especially  by  the  United  States  of  America. 
Through  the  influence  of  Irish-Americans  great  pressure 
was  brought  to  bear  upon  President  Wilson,  and  Irish 
emissaries  dogged  the  precincts  of  Versailles,  with 
urgent  pleas  to  obtain  a  hearing.  It  was  of  course  im- 
possible for  Great  Britain  to  put  the  case  of  Ireland  on 
to  the  conference  table.  It  would  have  been  a  surrender 
of  pride  and  a  confession  of  impotence  which  her 
people  would  not  tolerate  for  a  second,  even  in  imagina- 
tion. Only  the  simpHcity  of  the  Irish  mind,  simple 
even  with  all  its  shrewdness  and  its  cunning,  could  have 
hoped  for  such  a  surrender — in  the  days  of  England's 
victory.  It  is  foolish  to  ask  something  beyond  the 
bounds  of  human  nature  as  it  is  now  constituted,  and 
that  was  one  thing.  Lloyd  George  merely  smiled  at 
such  audacity,  or  was  impatient  at  the  mention  of  it. 
President  Wilson  bluntly  told  his  Irish-Americans  that 
that  question  belonged  to  Great  Britain's  domestic 
politics,  and  could  not  be  touched  by  other  Powers. 

Yet  the  high-sounding  phrases  on  the  Hps  of  our 
statesmen  during  the  peace  discussions  were  but  a  mock- 
ery so  long  as  Ireland  remained  under  martial  law, 
and  the  more  honest  men  at  least  who  related  their 
phrases  to  their  deeds,  and  who  were  touched  by  the 
inspiration  of  victory  which  after  long  agony  and  a 
heritage  of  ruin  promised  the  beginning  of  a  new  chap- 
ter in  the  history  of  the  world,  would  have  put  themselves 
right  with  their  conscience  by  a  magnanimous  settlement 
in  Ireland.  There  was  no  magnanimity.  While  there 
was  talk  of  a  more  generous  measure  of  Home  Rule,  and 
houses  were  being  searched  for  arms  in  Catholic  Ireland 
(but  never  one  in  Protestant  Ireland),  Sir  Edward 
Carson  went  to  Ireland  and  threatened  to  renew  his 
rebellion  if  the  government  brought  in  a  Home  Rule 
bill  of  which  he  did  not  approve.     He  was  not  arrested 

21  313 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

for  rebellious  speech.  On  the  contrary,  Mr.  Bonar  Law 
and  his  friends  found  no  harm  in  it,  though  in  Catholic 
Ireland  a  man  was  sentenced  to  two  years' imprisonment 
for  singing  an  old  rebel  song. 

When  at  last  the  Irish  people  saw  their  hopes  of  the 
peace  treaty  dashed  to  the  ground,  when  they  found 
that  they  were  still  at  the  mercy  of  military  and  police 
governance  (with  all  their  best  men  in  jail),  something 
broke  in  them  and  the  floodgates  of  passion  were 
opened,  and  out  of  the  bitterness  of  their  hearts  came  the 
spirit  of  vengeance,  and  the  will  to  kill. 

IX 

It  was  the  beginning  of  a  horrible  guerrilla  warfare, 
worse  even  than  modern  war  between  regular  armies, 
because  of  its  moral  degradation,  its  secret  acts,  its 
individual  cruelties,  its  action  among  women  and 
children,  its  effect  upon  the  psychology  of  the  rival 
forces,  its  red  Indian  methods.  The  boys  who  enlisted 
in  the  "Irish  Republican  Army"  wore  no  uniforms, 
were  not  distinguishable  from  the  civilian  population, 
and  carried  out  their  work  of  killing  by  craft  and  cun- 
ning rather  than  by  open  courage.  Their  first  attacks 
were  upon  the  Royal  Irish  Constabulary,  whom  they 
regarded  as  the  agents  of  an  alien  tyranny,  or  as  spies 
and  informers.  One  by  one,  these  men  were  killed  like 
dogs,  without  a  dog's  chance  of  self-defense.  The 
British  government  tried  to  stamp  out  this  campaign 
of  death  by  unlimited  coercion.  According  to  Erskine 
Childers,  in  his  book.  Military  Rule  in  Ireland,  there 
were,  between  January,  1919,  and  March,  1920,  22,279 
raids  on  houses,  2,332  political  arrests,  151  deportations, 
429  proclamations  suppressing  meetings  and  newspapers. 

By  the  autumn  of  1920  one  hundred  and  six  constables 
had  been  killed  by  Sinn  Feiners,  and  in  the  summer  of 

314 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

that  year,  abandoning  all  policy  of  reconciliation,  the 
British  government  passed  an  Act  which  took  away  all 
civil  rights  from  the  Irish  people.  Courts-martial  were 
established,  civil  inquests  were  abandoned;  any  Irish 
man,  woman,  or  child  could  be  arrested  on  suspicion, 
and  imprisoned  without  trial,  for  holding  political 
opinions  with  which  British  officers  did  not  agree,  for 
belonging  to  societies  which  upheld  the  Irish  claim  to 
self-government,  for  any  act  or  word  or  gesture,  or  the 
absence  of  any  act  or  word,  to  the  annoyance  of  any 
patrol  of  military  or  police,  drunk  or  sober.  That  was 
not  the  legal  wording  of  the  Act,  but  those  were  the  pow- 
ers it  gave  and  the  powers  that  were  used. 

The  policy  of  coercion  was  intrusted  by  the  British 
government  to  the  Chief  Secretary,  Sir  Hamar  Green- 
wood, a  Canadian  Jew,  who  in  my  judgment  has  done 
more  to  dishonor  the  British  Empire  than  any  Hving 
man.  He  owed  his  position  to  that  group  of  interests 
led  by  Lord  Beaverbrook  (formerly  Max  Aitken  of 
Canada)  with  the  approval  of  Bonar  Law  and  the 
sanction  of  Lloyd  George,  and  he  held  it  by  a  bluff, 
breezy,  John  Bull  manner,  which  was  the  camouflage 
of  craft,  and  by  a  courage  and  obstinacy  in  a  dangerous 
policy  which  was  the  admiration  of  Tory  minds  with 
Prussian  instincts,  while  he  astonished  and  delighted 
them  by  his  blank  denials  of  undeniable  evidence,  his 
utter  contempt  for  criticism  and  rebuke,  his  audacious 
handling  of  truth,  his  superb  refusal  to  be  intimidated 
by  accusations  of  dishonor,  lying,  brutality,  and  con- 
nivance with  crime.  In  Ireland,  General  Macready, 
old  and  artful  in  war  and  civil  strife,  was  put  in  com- 
mand of  military  operations,  and  General  Tudor,  who 
has  the  soul  of  a  Welsh  chieftain  in  the  eleventh  century, 
was  made  responsible  for  the  police,  including  a  special 
body  of  volunteers,  recruits  from  the  unemployed  soldiers 
of  the  Great  War,  at  a  high  rate  of  pay,  and  known  by 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

their  nickname  of  Black-and-Tans,  which  will  live  in 
history,  with  unenviable  fame. 

The  stage  was  set  for  the  dirtiest  kind  of  warfare 
which  has  ever  happened  in  modern  times. 

The  Sinn  Feiners  adopted  the  ambush  method  as 
their  main  system  of  attack,  their  first  purpose  being 
the  capture  of  arms  and  ammunition.  It  was  an  easy, 
though  dangerous,  game  for  them  to  come  at  night  into 
a  district  away  from  their  own  homes,  and  to  lie  in  wait 
for  a  military  convoy  or  a  lorry  full  of  soldiers,  from 
whom  they  were  concealed  behind  hedges  or  walls. 
Irish  chemists  had  concocted  bombs  for  them  which 
would  blow  a  lorry  to  bits  or  make  a  mess  of  a  party 
of  soldiers.  I  am  told  they  were  "better"  bombs  than 
those  used  in  the  European  war.  Later,  by  attacks  on 
Irish  "barracks" — generally  a  small  house  or  white- 
washed building,  containing  a  few  constables,  whom 
they  isolated  first  by  feUing  trees  across  the  roads  of 
approach  and  cutting  telephone  wires — they  obtained 
small  stores  of  arms,  and  then  as  their  strength  increased 
and  they  were  able  to  attack  stronger  garrisons,  large 
stores  of  arms. 

Their  "Intelligence"  was  highly  efficient,  as  they  had 
their  recruits  in  every  town  and  village  of  Ireland,  in 
every  post  office,  at  every  railway  station,  in  banks  and 
government  buildings,  even  in  Dublin  Castle  itself. 
By  clever  strategy  and  the  ruthless  use  of  firearms, 
they  captured  many  mails  and  discovered  the  plans  and 
activities  of  British  officers,  police  constables,  and 
private  individuals.  Any  man  of  English,  Scottish,  or 
Irish  race  who  conveyed  information  against  members 
of  the  Irish  Republican  Army  was  marked  down  for 
execution  as  a  spy,  and  with  long  patience  and  cunning 
they  tracked  him  down  until  one  day  his  body  was 
riddled  with  bullets  by  a  sudden  attack  in  a  lonely 
place,  and  left  there  with  the  words,  "Spy,  tried,  con- 

316 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

victed  and  shot.  I.  R.  A."  as  a  warning  to  others  of 
his  kind.  They  shot  some  of  their  own  women  for 
"conversation"  with  the  enemy,  or  cut  off  their  hair 
in  the  market  place,  as  I  saw  women  treated  in  Belgium 
for  the  same  offense  with  Germans.  No  enemy  of 
theirs  was  safe,  eating  or  drinking,  praying  or  sleeping, 
indoors  or  out,  with  wife  and  children  or  with  fellow 
worshipers  in  church.  Into  lonely  farmhouses  broke 
parties  of  masked  men,  to  drag  out  some  trembling 
fellow,  in  spite  of  the  shrieks  of  his  women  folk,  to  shoot 
him  in  the  back  yard,  or,  if  he  struggled,  in  the  presence 
of  his  wife  and  children.  A  British  officer,  retired  after 
the  European  war,  sat  at  table  with  his  wife  in  a  house 
near  Dublin.  As  usual,  his  revolver  lay  ready  at  his 
elbow.  It  was  the  wife  who  noticed  movements  of  men 
first.  The  husband  had  time  to  raise  his  hand  and 
dodge  as  two  men  came  in  and  fired.  His  hand  received 
the  bullet,  and  he  shot  his  enemy  through  the  stomach. 
The  wife  seized  the  other  man  by  the  throat  and  grabbed 
his  revolver.  He  fled  after  a  second  of  struggle,  and 
the  husband  and  wife  escaped  that  night  from  Ireland, 
more  lucky  than  others.  More  lucky,  for  instance, 
than  the  unfortunate  officers  who  were  billeted  in 
Dublin  and  murdered  in  their  bedrooms  in  the  presence 
of  their  wives.  ...  If  women  were  in  the  way,  there 
was  no  mercy  for  them,  at  least  in  the  case  of  an  officer 
named  Blake,  who  had  been  playing  tennis  with  a 
friend  until  dark,  and  then  joined  two  ladies  in  a  motor 
car.  After  a  short  drive,  he  got  down  to  open  a  park 
gate,  and  as  he  did  so  a  party  of  men  leaped  out  and 
shot  him.  One  of  the  ladies  (who  was  expecting  a 
child)  flung  herself  between  the  assassins  and  the 
second  officer,  and  shared  his  fate,  which  was  death. 
The  other  lady  was  allowed  to  escape.  Such  incidents 
were  not  rare. 

Inspired   by   a   cold   hatred   of  any   man   in   British 

317 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

uniform,  embittered  by  prison  treatment,  which  is 
never  a  reconciling  remedy,  and  inflamed  by  the  rough 
handhng  of  soldiers  or  jailers,  by  the  terror  inflicted  on 
mothers  and  sisters  in  midnight  searches,  when  often  they 
had  to  submit  to  the  brutal  insults  of  drunken  men, 
and  above  all  by  a  fanatical  beUef  in  the  justice  of 
their  cause,  young  Irishmen  in  all  parts  of  the  country 
engaged  in  this  red  Indian  warfare,  and  had  no  kind  of 
human  pity,  no  softening  touch  of  conscience,  when  it 
came  to  the  killing  of  a  "spy,"  the  ambush  of  troops,  or 
the  execution  of  men  whom  they  called  murderers 
because  in  courts-martial  they  had  condemned  Irish 
rebels  to  death. 

These  Irish  boys  received  their  orders  from  head- 
quarters, and  obeyed  them  with  the  knowledge  that  if 
they  disobeyed  they  would  be  condemned  as  cowards 
and  traitors.  By  all  laws  of  human  nature  there  must 
have  been  boys  among  them  who  had  no  spirit  for  the 
fight,  who  hated  the  thought  of  kilUng  or  being  killed — 
gentle  lads,  taught  to  love  Christ  and  the  peace  of 
Christ — and  I  am  told  that  some  of  them  wept  and 
agonized  when  the  secret  orders  came.  But  for  the  most 
part,  as  I  am  told  also  by  their  friends,  they  were  eager 
to  go  into  "action,"  impatient  to  get  the  order  for  an 
ambush,  grim,  resolute,  and  cunning  in  this  way  of 
attack,  and  heroic  in  their  off"er  of  death  for  Ireland's 
sake,  as  they  believed,  if  they  were  shot  in  action  or 
hanged  in  jail. 

These  boys  were  incited,  inspired,  and  comforted 
by  many  of  their  women  and  many  of  their  priests, 
who  regarded  them  as  soldiers  in  a  war  of  liberation, 
justified  in  the  sight  of  God  and  by  the  code  of  human 
honor.  To  the  reproach  that  they  were  not  in  uniform, 
they  talked  about  the  Boers.  To  the  accusation  of 
murder,  they  asked  what  England  did  to  German  spies. 
To    a    death  sentence  for    carrying  firearms    or    being 

318 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

caught  In  an  ambush,  they  rebuked  their  judges — Brit-' 
ish  officers  of  courts-martial — for  killing  their  prison- 
ers. And  theoretically  there  was  logic  in  those  answers, 
as  British  officers  I  know  admit.  But  the  logic  of  this 
kind  of  war  is  devil's  logic.  Not  even  for  liberty's  sake 
is  the  kiUing  of  men  in  cold  blood  or  before  their  women 
folk  justified.  Not  even  savage  warfare  could  be  more 
cruel  than  some  of  the  acts  committed  by  the  I.  R.  A., 
like  the  assassination  of  officers  on  leave  in  Dublin. 

The  spirit  of  it  belongs  to  the  Paleolithic  Age,  and 
is  not  to  be  reconciled  with  the  Christian  faith  by  any 
casuistry,  though  Catholic  priests  gave  it  their  blessing 
and  inspired  its  action  by  their  own  ardor.  Now  and 
again  some  of  their  bishops  protested  against  the  horror 
of  this  way  of  war  and  denounced  it  in  solemn  words. 

In  his  Advent  pastoral.  Cardinal  Logue  wrote  the 
following  words  referring  to  the  murder  of  fifteen  officers 
in  Dublin: 

The  tragedies  of  last  Sunday  have  oppressed  me  with  a  deep 
sense  of  sadness  and  a  feeling  akin  to  despair.  I  have  never  hesitated 
to  condemn,  in  the  strongest  terms  at  my  command,  such  deeds  of 
blood,  from  whatever  source  they  may  have  sprung.  I  believe 
that  every  man  and  woman  in  Ireland  who  retains  a  spark  of  Chris- 
tian feeling,  or  even  the  instincts  of  humanity,  deplores,  detests, 
and  condemns  the  cold-blooded  murders  of  Sunday  morning.  No 
object  could  excuse  them;  no  motive  could  justify  them;  no  heart, 
unless  hardened  and  steeled  against  pity,  could  tolerate  their  cruelty. 
Patriotism  is  a  noble  virtue  when  it  pursues  its  object  by  means 
that  are  sincere,  honorable,  just,  and  in  strict  accordance  with 
God's  law;  otherwise  it  degenerates  into  a  blind,  brutal,  reckless 
passion,  inspired  not  by  love  of  country,  but  by  Satan,  "who  was  a 
murderer  from  the  beginning."  The  perpetrators  of  such  crimes 
are  not  real  patriots,  but  the  enemies  of  their  country,  robbing  her 
of  just  sympathy  and  raising  obstacles  to  her  progress  and  im- 
pressing a  deep  stain  on  her  fair  fame. 

The  cardinal  also  condemned  in  the  same  pastoral 
the   general,   indiscriminate   massacre  of  innocent   and 

319 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

inoffensive  victims  which  was  perpetrated  by  the  forces 
of  the  Crown  in  Croke  Park  on  Sunday  evening — 
when  Black-and-Tans  fired  into  a  football  crowd,  causing 
fifty  casualties,  as  a  retaliation  for  the  morning  crimes. 
A  week  later  fifteen  of  the  auxiliary  cadets  were  am- 
bushed in  County  Cork  and  the  wounded  were  killed 
to  a  man,  in  revenge  for  their  action  at  Croke  Park. 
In  revenge  again  for  that  the  police  burned  down  a  large 
sector  of  the  most  prosperous  quarter  of  Cork. 

On  December  12,  1920,  Doctor  Cohalan,  the  Catholic 
Bishop  of  Cork,  issued  a  proclamation  in  reference  to 
ambushes,  kidnapping,  and  murder.  He  said  that 
besides  the  guilt  involved  in  these  acts  by  reason  of 
their  opposition  to  the  law  of  God,  anyone  who  should 
within  the  diocese  of  Cork  organize  or  take  part  in  an 
ambush,  or  in  kidnapping,  or  otherwise  should  be 
guilty  of  murder  or  attempt  at  murder,  should  incur, 
by  the  very  act,  the  censure  of  excommunication. 

In  the  course  of  his  sermon  at  the  cathedral.  Bishop 
Cohalan  said  it  was  a  safe  exploit  to  murder  a  police- 
man from  behind  a  screen,  and  until  reprisals  began 
there  was  no  danger  to  the  general  community,  but,  even 
leaving  aside  the  moral  aspect  of  the  question  for  the 
moment,  what  has  the  country  gained  pohtically  by 
the  murder  of  policemen?  Some  Republicans  spoke 
of  such  and  such  districts  of  the  country  being  deHvered 
from  British  sway  when  policemen  were  murdered  and 
barracks  burned.  It  was  a  narrow  view,  and  v/ho 
would  now  mention  any  district  that  had  been  delivered 
from  British  rule  by  the  murder  of  the  old  Royal  Irish 
Constabulary  men  and  the  burning  of  barracks?  No, 
the  killing  of  the  Royal  Irish  Constabulary  men  was 
murder,  and  the  burning  of  barracks  was  simply  the  de- 
struction of  Irish  property. 

The  bishop  continued  that  reprisals  began  with  the 
murder  of  the  late  Lord  Mayor  MacCurtain,  and  now 

320 


1 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

it  was  like  a  devil's  competition  between  some  members 
of  the  Republicans  and  agents  of  the  Crown,  in  feats  of 
murder  and  arson.  Recently  ambushes  had  taken 
place  with  serious  loss  of  Ufe,  and  he  would  say  this 
about  ambushes  (leaving  out  of  the  question  for  the 
moment  their  moral  aspect) — the  ambushers  come  to 
a  place  from  no  one  knows  where,  and  when  their  work 
is  done  they  depart  to  no  one  knows  what  destination. 
There  is  not  much  risk  to  the  ambushers  personally, 
but  by  this  time  boys  or  men  taking  part  in  ambushes 
must  know  that  by  their  criminal  acts  they  are  expos- 
ing perhaps  a  whole  countryside,  perhaps  a  town  or 
city,  to  the  danger  of  terrible  reprisals;  that  when  they 
depart  and  disperse  in  safety  they  are  leaving  the  hves 
and  property  of  a  number  of  innocent  people  unprotected 
and  undefended,  to  the  fury  of  reprisals  at  the  hands  of 
servants  of  the  government.  Then,  over  and  above 
all,  there  was  the  moral  aspect  of  these  ambushes.  Let 
there  be  no  doubt  about  it — there  was  no  doubt  about 
it — that  these  ambushers  were  murderers,  and  every 
life  taken  in  an  ambush  was  a  murder.  Notwithstanding 
repeated  condemnations  of  murder,  and  repeated  warn- 
ing, terrible  murders  had  been  committed  these  past 
few  weeks.  As  a  result  of  the  ambush  the  previous 
night  at  Dillon's  Cross,  the  city  had  suffered,  the  bishop 
thought,  as  much  damage  at  the  hands  of  the  servants 
of  the  government  as  Dublin  had  suffered  during  the 
rebellion  of  1916.  It  was  all  very  well  to  talk  of  the 
city  of  Cork  being  under  the  care  and  solicitude  of  the 
Republican  Army.  The  city  was  nearly  a  ruin,  and  the 
ruin  had  followed  on  the  murderous  ambush  at  Dillon's 
Cross.  If  any  section  or  member  of  the  volunteer 
organization  refused  to  hear  the  Church's  teaching 
about  murder,  there  was  no  remedy  but  the  extreme 
remedy  of  excommunication  from  the  Church,  and 
the  bishop  said  he  would  certainly  issue  a  decree  ex- 

321 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

communicating  anyone  who,  after  that  notice,  should 
take  part  in  an  ambush  or  in  kidnapping,  or  otherwise 
should  be  guilty  of  murder  or  attempted  murder,  or 
arson. 

The  bishop  concluded  by  asking  the  congregation  to 
pray  that  God  in  His  mercy  would  vouchsafe  an  honor- 
able peace  which  would  of  itself  be  an  effective  means 
of  putting  an  end  to  crime  and  re-establishing  order. 

Those  pastoral  denunciations  fell  on  deaf  ears,  not 
without  consequences  which  the  CathoUc  Church  in 
Ireland  will  rue  for  many  a  long  day,  as  for  the  first 
time  in  history  Irishmen  in  great  numbers  broke  free 
from  the  authority  of  their  ecclesiastical  leaders,  and 
denied  their  right  to  interfere  in  this  political  and 
national  struggle  by  any  religious  call  to  obedience  and 
discipline. 

X 

That  is  one  side  of  the  picture.  Sinn  Fein  murders, 
ambushes,  and  raids,  the  blowing  up  of  trains,  the 
burning  down  of  old  mansions,  the  terrorism  of  armed 
and  secret  bands  undistinguished  by  any  sign  or  badge 
among  ordinary  civilians,  unless  they  were  caught 
red-handed. 

There  is  another  side,  and  in  all  honesty  we  must 
bring  it  to  the  light  of  truth.  The  forces  of  "law  and 
order"  in  Ireland,  above  all  that  force  known  as  the 
Black-and-Tans  (because  of  black  belts  on  khaki  tunics), 
under  General  Tudor,  committed  acts  exactly  like  those 
of  the  Sinn  Fein  "gunmen,"  not  more  justified.  A 
famous  case  which  could  not  be  hushed  up  was  the 
murder  of  Mr.  McCurtain,  Lord  Mayor  of  Cork,  by 
masked  men  who  killed  him  at  dead  of  night  before  his 
wife's  eyes.  In  spite  of  all  government  denials  there  is 
little  doubt  in  the  public  mind,  both  in  Ireland  and  in 
England,  that  the  Lord  Mayor  was  the  victim  of  a  police 

322 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

reprisal.  That  was  only  one  of  many  less-known  cases. 
This  guerrilla  warfare  became  a  vendetta  like  that  of 
Sicilian  bandits.  The  Sinn  Feiners  killed  a  British 
soldier  or  policeman.  To  revenge  his  death,  British 
troops  or  police — mostly  General  Tudor's  "lions" — 
killed  the  first  Sinn  Feiners  they  could  lay  hands  on. 
A  British  patrol  was  ambushed  near  a  village.  Shortly 
afterward  troops  would  appear  in  lorries  shooting  up 
the  street,  spraying  bullets  from  machine  guns,  and 
at  their  leisure  burning  a  few  houses,  the  local  stores, 
or  the  creamery.  Men  would  be  dragged  out  of  their 
beds  and  shot,  young  boys  would  be  battered  in  their 
back  yards,  and  women  frightened  out  of  their  wits 
by  midnight  raids. 

Then  the  next  chapter  would  begin.  Those  troops 
would  be  marked  down,  their  officers  identified  by  private 
letters  captured  in  the  mails,  and  there  would  be  fresh 
ambushes,  fresh  murders,  leading  to  more  reprisals, 
more  raids,  more  burnings,  and  the  "accidental"  shoot- 
ing of  women  standing  at  their  shop  doors,  children 
playing  in  the  village  street,  old  men  working  in  their 
fields,  young  men  who  ran  away  when  called  to  halt, 
knowing  that  if  they  halted  they  would,  as  likely  as  not, 
be  shot  or  bayoneted  or  clubbed — innocent  or  guilty. 

I  can  understand  the  psychology  of  our  men,  as  I 
imagine  (perhaps  quite  falsely)  that  I  understand  the 
psychology  of  the  Sinn  Feiners,  though  I  loathe  their 
way  of  war.  It  is  indeed  easy  to  understand  the  men- 
tality of  a  body  of  young  British  soldiers  or  "Black-and- 
Tans,"  sent  to  a  district  in  Ireland.  In  the  beginning 
they  thought  it  was  going  to  be  "a  soft  job."  They 
had  visions  of  a  brush  or  two  with  Irish  rebels  who 
would  then  be  good  boys  and  see  the  folly  of  their  game, 
up  against  tanks,  machine  guns,  and  well-trained  troops 
who  had  been  through  the  Great  War.  There  would  be 
flirtations  with  pretty  Irish  lasses,  plenty  of  milk  in  the 

323 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

farmhouses,  a  gay  time  in  Dublin  or  Cork,  and  friendly 
greetings  on  the  "long,  long  way  to  Tipperary."  .  .  . 

What  was  the  reality?  They  found  themselves  in 
a  hostile  population  in  which  there  were  enemies  who 
might  kill  them  if  they  walked  alone,  by  a  shot  in  the 
back  at  the  next  turn  of  the  road,  between  the  village 
stores  and  the  post  office,  at  the  corner  of  a  country 
lane,  at  any  time  of  the  day  or  night.  Whichever  way 
they  looked,  they  saw  hostile  eyes  staring  at  them, 
eyes  w4th  hatred  in  them,  eyes  which  had  a  menace  of 
death.  If  they  spoke  to  a  pretty  girl  she  did  not  smile, 
like  the  girls  in  France,  but  became  pale  with  fear  or 
red  with  anger.  There  was  a  sense  of  menace  always 
about  them.  Out  of  a  crowd  in  a  market  place  there 
might  come  a  group  of  men  to  shoot  them  down  like 
dogs  when  they  were  buying  picture  postcards.  Pres- 
ently they  were  not  allowed  to  go  about,  except  in 
military  formation  or  in  armored  cars  and  lorries. 
They  were  cooped  up  in  barracks  where  they  could 
drink  as  much  as  they  liked.  There  was  nothing  to 
do  except  drink  and  play  cards,  until  night  came  and 
they  were  ordered  to  form  search  parties.  They  were 
taught  their  duty.  General  Tudor  gave  lectures  to 
his  officers  about  the  short  way  with  rebels.  The 
officers  passed  the  word  on  to  the  men.  There  was  no 
sentiment  about  it.     No  gentle  chivalry!  .  .  . 

Passion  took  hold  of  them  at  times.  A  favorite 
comrade  had  been  shot  in  a  lonely  place.  They  had  been 
sniped  as  they  passed  down  a  village  street.  A  mess 
of  flesh  and  blood  was  all  that  was  left  of  some  pals  in  a 
lorry  proceeding  up  a  country  road  near  a  lonely  farm- 
house or  wayside  inn  or  little  Irish  town.  Where  was 
the  enemy?  Nowhere — and  everywhere.  How  could 
one  distinguish  between  innocent  and  guilty?  They 
were  all  guilty — "Sinn  Fein  up  to  the  neck,"  as  the 
British  soldier  said.     "Give  them  a  taste  of  their  own 

324 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

poison!"  ...  So  reprisals  happened.  They  were  as 
logical  as  hell — but  not  a  credit  to  the  fame  of  England, 
or  Scotland,  not  in  our  old  code  of  honor,  not  good  for 
pubUcation. 

The  only  place  in  which  they  were  not  reported  for 
publication  was  in  the  newspaper  press  of  Great  Britain. 
Mr.  Lloyd  George's  newspaper  friends  did  not  like  to 
hurt  his  feelings.  Other  papers  did  not  Hke  to  hurt 
the  feelings  of  readers  more  interested  in  our  nobility 
of  ideals  or  our  divorce-court  cases.  Questions  were 
asked  in  the  House,  and  Sir  Hamar  Greenwood  showed 
his  quality  in  answering  them.  He  first  denied  all 
accusations  blankly  and  firmly.  Reprisals?  Certainly 
not!  Never!  No  such  thing!  Sinn  Fein  propaganda! 
General  Tudor's  young  gentlemen  were  noble  fellows — 
heroes  of  the  Great  War.  He  could  find  no  evidence 
at  all — after  careful  inquiry — for  any  alleged  acts  of 
violence. 

In  every  country  in  the  world  Sinn  Fein  was  report- 
ing tragic  episodes,  shocking  misdeeds,  by  men  wearing 
British  uniforms,  arousing  the  suspicion  or  horror  of 
our  friends,  the  hatred  of  our  enemies.  But  in  England 
for  a  long  time  we  heard  nothing  but  Sinn  Fein  atroci- 
ties, in  full  detail.  The  English  people  were  unable  to 
obtain  evidence  of  things  done  to  their  dishonor,  and 
it  is  to  their  credit  that  without  such  evidence  they  were 
slow  to  believe  that  British  Ministers  or  British  officers 
would  connive  at  a  policy  of  terrorism  which  violated  all 
our  best  traditions.  Presently  ugly  facts  did  begin 
to  thrust  through  the  screen  of  silence.  The  represent- 
atives of  some  newspapers  like  the  Times ^  the  Daily 
NezvSy  and  the  Manchester  Guardian  were  allowed  by 
their  editors  to  tell  the  things  they  had  seen  and  the 
evidence  they  had  gained.  Mr.  Hugh  Martin,  of  the 
Daily  News,  was  especially  courageous  in  unmasking 
the  truth,  and  his  reports  of  the  burning  and  sacking  of 

325 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

Irish  villages,  the  flogging  and  battering  of  Irish  boys, 
the  shooting  of  civilians  in  cold  blood  by  bodies  of 
Black-and-Tans,  and  the  terrori /.ation  of  Irish  women  in 
midnight  raids  by  drunken  or  brutalized  mihtary  police, 
could  not  be  denied,  excepting  by  Sir  Hamar  Greenwood. 

One  of  the  most  notorious  cases,  not  more  terrible 
than  many  others,  but  less  easy  to  conceal  because  a 
resident  magistrate  risked  his  life  by  giving  evidence, 
was  the  murder  of  Canon  Magner  and  Timothy  Crowley. 
The  facts,  as  officially  admitted,  were  that  at  i  p.m. 
on  December  17,  1920,  about  thirty  auxiliary  police 
left  Dunmanway,  in  two  motor  lorries,  with  a  cadet 
named  Hart  in  charge,  to  go  to  Cork  to  attend  the 
funeral  of  one  of  their  force  who  was  recently  shot  dead 
at  Cork.  About  a  mile  on  the  road  they  met  Canon 
Magner,  the  seventy-three-year-old  parish  priest  of 
Dunmanway,  and  Timothy  Crowley,  aged  twenty-four, 
a  farmer's  son.  The  cadet  in  charge  stopped  the  lor- 
ries, walked  up  to  Timothy  Crowley,  asked  him  for  a 
permit,  and  then  shot  him  dead  with  his  revolver. 
He  then  turned  to  the  priest  and,  according  to  the  evi- 
dence of  one  of  the  police,  "started  talking  to  him." 
Two  other  cadets  went  toward  him,  but  he  turned  round, 
waving  his  revolver.  While  they  were  returning. 
Cadet  Hart  seized  the  hat  from  the  priest's  head  and 
threw  it  on  the  ground  and  made  him  kneel  down.  He 
fired  and  wounded  him,  and  then  fired  again,  killing 
him.  He  went  through  the  priest's  pockets.  Mr. 
Brady,  the  resident  magistrate,  who  was  a  witness  of 
the  murder,  was  also  threatened  with  death,  but  took 
cover  and  escaped.  It  was  evident  that  Cadet  Hart 
had  been  drinking  heavily.  He  was  arrested,  and 
certified  as  "insane"  by  his  superior  officers. 

In  the  House  of  Commons,  on  March  3,  1921,  Com- 
mander Kenworthy  asked  Sir  Hamar  Greenwood  whether 
he   was   aware   that   Mr.    Brady,   resident   magistrate, 

326 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

present  at  the  murder  of  Crowley  and  Canon  Magner, 
stated  that  the  other  cadets  in  the  lorry  made  no  attempt 
to  interfere,  that  Mr.  Brady's  house  was  subsequently 
raided;  whether  Mr.  Brady  was  called  as  a  witness  at 
the  special  investigation;  whether  these  other  cadets 
were  punished  in  any  way,  and  whether  any  of  them  are 
now  employed  in  Ireland. 

Sir  Hamar  Greenwood  answered: 

A  written  statement  by  Mr.  Brady,  setting  out  the 
full  circumstances  of  the  murder,  was  fully  considered 
in  the  course  of  the  official  investigation  into  the  con- 
duct of  the  cadets  who  were  witnesses  of  the  occurrence. 
As  a  result  of  this  investigation  it  was  decided  that 
these  cadets  were  in  no  v/ay  responsible  for  the  crime 
and  that  no  action  was  called  for  in  their  case. 

On  March  19th,  three  months  after  the  murder, 
Ministers  were  asked  whether  Mr.  Brady's  house  had 
been  raided  by  the  auxiliaries,  whether  they  had  threat- 
ened him,  and  whether  he  had  left  the  country  on  the 
advice  of  the  right  honorable  gentleman's  responsible 
officers. 

Replying  for  Sir  Hamar  Greenwood,  Mr.  Henry 
could  not  deny  this  statement,  but  professed  ignorance 
of  the  whereabouts  of  Mr.  Brady,  who  had  obtained 
leave  of  absence  and  was  "broken  down  in   nerves." 

It  was  in  September,  1920,  that  the  burning  and  loot- 
ing of  Balbriggan  drew  national  attention  to  a  policy 
of  reprisals  that  had  already  been  in  force  and  could  no 
longer  be  denied  by  the  British  government.  Lord 
Grey,  Lord  Robert  Cecil,  Mr.  Asquith,  and  Mr.  Hender- 
son called  for  an  inquiry,  and  that  was  replied  to 
flippantly  by  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  who  seemed  to  find 
singular  amusement  in  the  destruction  of  Irish  cream- 
eries. Mr.  Winston  Churchill  defended  the  conduct  of 
the  military  and  police  in  Ireland,  and  said  that  if  the 
armed   forces  of  the   Crown  were  punished   for  their 

327 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

conduct  they  would  revolt.  General  Macready  had 
already  admitted  that  it  was  "a  delicate  and  difficult 
matter"  to  punish  men  who,  under  his  authority,  did 
acts  of  indiscipline  in  the  way  of  reprisals.  Later,  at 
Carnarvon,  the  Prime  Minister  of  England  admitted 
and  defended  reprisals  in  a  speech  of  memorable  bru- 
tality. 

The  Irish  Catholic  bishops  issued  a  manifesto  denounc- 
ing the  reign  of  terror  caused  by  reprisals  as  solemnly 
as  they  denounced  the  Sinn  Fein  warfare. 

We  know  that  latterly,  at  least,  all  pretense  of  strict  discipline 
has  been  thrown  to  the  winds  and  that  those  who  profess  to  be  the 
guardians  of  law  and  order  have  become  the  most  ardent  votaries 
of  lawlessness  and  disorder;  that  they  are  running  wild  through  the 
country,  making  night  hideous  by  raids;  that  reckless  and  indis- 
criminate shootings  in  crowded  places  have  made  many  innocent 
victims;  that  towns  are  sacked  as  in  the  rude  warfare  of  earlier  ages; 
that  those  who  run  through  fear  are  shot  at  sight.  .  .  .  For  all 
this  not  the  men,  but  their  masters,  are  chiefly  to  blame.  It  is  not 
a  question  of  hasty  reprisals,  which,  however  unjustifiable,  might 
be  attributed  to  extreme  provocation,  nor  of  quick  retaliation  on 
evildoers,  nor  of  lynch  law  for  miscreants — much  less  of  self-defense 
of  any  kind  whatsoever.  It  is  an  indiscriminate  vengeance  delib- 
erately wreaked  on  a  whole  countryside,  without  any  proof  of  its 
complicity  in  crime,  by  those  who  ostensibly  are  employed  by  the 
British  government  to  protect  the  lives  and  property  of  the  people 
and  restore  order  in  Ireland. 

While  this  was  happening,  the  Home  Rule  Act  was 
annulled  and  a  new  and  utterly  inadequate  measure 
was  passed  through  Parliament,  disregarding  the  advice, 
warning,  and  pleading  of  English  Liberals  and  Irish 
Moderates.  It  divided  Ireland  into  two  nations,  one 
with  a  population  of  three  and  a  quarter  millions,  the 
other  of  one  and  a  quarter,  and  there  could  not  be  a 
single  legislature  unless  the  majority  agreed  to  give 
half  the  representation  to  the  minority.  That  alone 
secured   its   condemnation   by   every   Irishman   in   the 

}2S 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

South  and  West;  neither  Protestant  Ulster  nor  Cath- 
olic Ireland  believed  in  it  as  a  promise  of  peace. 


XI 

All  through  the  year  of  1920  and  half  the  year  of  1921 
the  reign  of  terror  continued  in  Ireland,  with  increasing 
ruthlessness  on  both  sides,  and  with  a  complete  aban- 
donment of  statesmanship  by  the  British  government  in 
favor  of  what  was  called  by  the  Lord  Chancellor  of 
England,  in  sinister  words,  *'The  Reconquest  of  Ire- 
land"! Yet  it  was  denied  that  we  were  at  war  with 
the  Irish  people,  until  June,  1921,  when  the  word  "war" 
was  used  by  Ministers  in  the  House  of  Commons,  not 
carelessly,  I  think,  but  as  a  preparation  of  the  public 
mind  for  an  intensive  military  campaign  in  Catholic 
Ireland  after  the  inauguration  of  the  Ulster  Parliament. 
Because  we  were  not  officially  at  war  with  the  Irish  peo- 
ple, it  was  permissible  to  shoot  or  hang  our  captives  as 
rebels  and  murderers,  and  not  as  prisoners  of  war. 

On  November  i,  1920,  a  youth  named  Kevin  Barry, 
captured  in  action,  was  hanged  in  DubHn.  He  met  his 
death  with  a  cheerful  and  heroic  courage,  while  outside 
the  prison  vast  crowds  of  Irish  people  wept  and  prayed 
for  him. 

On  February  i,  1921,  Cornelius  Murphy  was  shot 
at  Cork  for  being  in  possession  of  a  revolver  and  ammu- 
nition. On  February  26th  five  Irish  lads  were  shot  at 
Cork  for  "levying  war."  On  February  28th  another 
man  was  shot  for  "being  improperly  in  possession 
of  a  revolver  and  ammunition."  On  March  14th  six 
men  were  hanged  in  batches  at  Dublin — two  on  a  charge 
of  murder,  and  four  on  a  charge  of  "high  treason  and 
levying  war."  Ten  others  followed  to  their  death  by 
shooting  or  hanging  in  Dublin  and  Cork  "for  being 
improperly  in  possession  of  arms  and  ammunition," 
22  329 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

a  charge  which  would  condemn  the  entire  youth  of 
Ireland  to  death,  in  Ulster  (where  no  arrest  was 
ever  made  on  such  a  charge)  as  well  as  in  the  Catholic 
provinces. 

There  was  no  cessation  of  hostilities  or  of  reprisals 
as  the  day  came  nearer  when  the  Home  Rule  Act  of  1920 
was  to  be  put  into  operation.  It  was  known  in  advance 
that  no  single  Sinn  Fein  member  would  attend  the 
Southern  Parliament,  but  the  British  were  determined 
to  set  up  the  Ulster  Parliament  as  a  preliminary  to  "re- 
conquest"  in  the  other  parts. 

On  June  ist,  only  a  few  weeks  before  that  new  era  in 
Irish  history,  Sir  Hamar  Greenwood  made  a  speech  on 
reprisals  in  Ireland,  in  which  he  made  the  following 
statement: 

I  have  said  at  this  bar  time  and  again,  in  reference  to  reprisals, 
that  no  one  tried  more  strenuously  than  I  have  to  put  them  down, 
and  I  think  I  have  succeeded  in  doing  so. 

Those  words  of  his  will  become  a  mockery  in  history, 
for  during  his  administration,  which  began  on  April  3, 
1920,  the  ''unofficial"  and  "official"  reprisals  increased 
at  a  monstrous  rate.  Whereas  in  April  there  were 
eleven  buildings  in  Ireland  wholly  or  partially  destroyed, 
in  May  there  were  thirty-eight,  in  June  twenty-four, 
in  July  two  hundred  and  forty-four,  in  August  two 
hundred  and  two,  and  in  the  first  five  months  of  192 1 
over  one  thousand. 

Sir  Hamar  Greenwood  also  said  that  in  the  non- 
martial  law  area,  which  comprises  the  great  part  of 
Ireland,  there  never  have  been  official  reprisals. 

"Reprisals  are  rare.  Unofficial  reprisals  are  now 
rare  indeed,  so  rare  that  we  may  say  they  never  occur 
in  Ireland."  That  statement,  soothing  to  our  British 
conscience,  was  immediately  challenged  by  the  Irish 
people,  who  issued  the  following  rejoinder: 

330 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

Unofficial  Reprisals  in  the  Non-martial  Law  Area 

The  havoc  in  Headford,  Co.  Galway,  on  January  i8th,  1920,  and 
subsequent  days  when  19  residences,  farmhouses  and  shops  were 
destroyed,  was  only  one  of  many  "unofficial"  reprisals  in  that 
month.  The  wrecking  of  Donegal  town  in  which  100  shops  and 
residences  were  destroyed  or  damaged  occurred  in  February.  The 
town  of  Clifden,  Connemara,  was  sacked  on  March  i6th.  Sixteen 
buildings  were  wholly  or  partially  destroyed  in  the  town  of  West- 
port,  Co.  Mayo,  on  March  26th.  During  the  month  of  April  many 
residences,  shops  and  other  premises  were  destroyed  in  fifteen  towns 
not  in  the  Martial  Law  area.  And  in  one  week  ending  May  21st, 
ten  farmhouses,  seven  private  residences,  four  shops,  two  hotels, 
a  granary  and  a  mill  were  destroyed  in  the  Non-martial  Law  counties 
of  Galway,  Mayo  and  Offaly  (King's  Co.). 

Unofficial  Reprisals  in  the  Martial  Law  Area 

So  much  for  some  of  the  "Unofficial"  reprisals,  "so  rare  that  we 
may  say  that  they  never  occur."  There  are  others.  In  the  eight 
counties  under  Martial  Law  the  number  of  buildings  and  property 
of  all  kinds  destroyed  "unofficially"  by  British  forces  was  more 
than  twice  the  number  of  the  buildings  and  property  officially  de- 
stroyed. The  following  is  a  comparison  covering  the  period  January 
1st,  1921,  to  May  28th,  1921,  between  the  premises  and  property 
destroyed  or  damaged  by  order  of  the  British  Military  Governors  in 
the  Martial  Law  area  and  those  destroyed  or  damaged  by  roving 
bands  of  Constables  and  Troops.  The  phrase  "Premises  and 
Property"  covers  crops,  furniture  and  personal  effects,  as  well  as 
shops,  farmhouses,  residences,  public  halls,  factories  and  works: 


Year  1921 

Premises  and  property 

destroyed  or  damaged 

under  official  order 

Premises  and  property 

destroyed  or  damaged 

unofficially 

January 

22 

7 

9 

36 

88 

52 

February 

76 

March 

19 

April 

35 

May  (ist-28th) 

172 

162 

354 

The   wholesale    destruction    of   the    houses   of  non- 
combatant    Irish    men    and    women,    "officially"    and 

331 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

"unofficially" — and  I  can  see  no  distinction  in  the  evil 
of  either  method  of  collective  punishment — failed  to 
terrorize  them  into  a  surrender  of  their  claim  to  self- 
government,  though  their  daily  life  was  haunted  by 
fear  and  their  nights  were  terror-stricken.  Sir  Hamar 
Greenwood,  faced  with  his  failure,  sought  refuge  in 
the  pretense  that  the  destruction  of  property  was  not 
considerable.  In  the  words  of  an  Irish  leader,  "over 
three  thousand  ruined  buildings  in  Ireland  gave  him 
the  lie." 

XII 

I  have  set  down  what  I  believe  to  be  the  true  facts 
about  Ireland,  impartially,  without  special  pleading  for 
one  side  or  the  other.  For  that  is  how  history  will  be 
written  and  we  shall  not  be  able  to  dodge  its  verdict. 
To  my  mind  now  looking  at  the  whole  tragedy  as  it  is 
close  to  us,  I  think  the  verdict  will  be  against  England, 
or  at  least  against  British  statesmen  who  betrayed  the 
honor  and  good  name  of  England,  and  the  ideals  for 
which  so  many  of  our  men  died  in  the  European  war. 
By  their  lack  of  generosity  in  early  days  when  it  would 
have  been  so  easy  to  be  generous,  and  so  fruitful  of 
friendship,  by  their  utter  disregard  of  the  Irish  temper- 
ament and  traditions,  by  their  malign  favoritism  toward 
the  truculance  of  Ulster — the  first  to  take  up  arms  and 
proclaim  rebelUon — by  their  poHtical  intrigues  and 
breaking  of  pledges,  by  their  adoption  of  Prussian 
methods  after  a  war  for  Hberty,  by  their  abandonment 
of  government  in  Ireland  to  military  and  police  officials 
with  narrow  brains  and  soulless  instincts,  by  conniving 
at  the  indiscIpHne  and  private  vengeance  of  armed  police, 
among  whom  were  men  of  evil  character  tempted  by 
opportunity,  and  provoked  into  passion,  by  ridiculing 
all  efforts  at  peace  and  reconcihation  by  thousands  of 
liberal  minds  in  England,   and  faUing  back  upon  old 

332 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

traditions  of  tyranny  and  coercion,  by  hiding  the  happen- 
ings in  Ireland  from  pubHc  knowledge  in  England,  and 
by  proceeding  stubbornly  upon  a  line  of  policy  which 
was  bound  to  fail  according  to  all  historical  experience, 
and  was  essentially  evil  in  its  principles,  they  raised  up 
enemies  against  us  in  all  parts  of  the  world,  and  so 
blackened^^our  reputation  that  it  will  need  the  saving 
grace  of  time  to  wash  it  clean  again  in  years  of  nobler 
leadership. 

Yet,  having  written  these  words,  which  are  not 
pleasant  to  write,  it  is  impossible  to  acquit  the  Irish 
people  of  evil  acts  and  obstinate  stupidities  which 
would  make  one  despair  of  them  if  they  were  not  re- 
deemed by  fine  qualities  of  spirit  and  character.  That 
guerrilla  warfare  of  theirs  was  a  dirty  business,  not 
justified  by  any  claim  to  liberty.  It  was  a  hark  back  to 
the  cave  men,  not  a  lead  forward  to  a  new  era  of  civili- 
zation and  human  progress.  There  are  limits  even  to 
the  claims  of  hberty,  for  otherwise  all  governments 
would  go  down  in  a  welter  of  bloody  anarchy,  because  a 
majority  or  minority  accused  them  of  "tyranny."  The 
Irish  people  had  a  right  to  demand  self-government 
within  the  Empire,  by  all  methods  consistent  with  a 
decent  code  of  honor.  Personally  I  cannot  think  that 
the  Easter  rebellion  belonged  to  that  code.  Because, 
whatever  the  measure  of  our  misdeeds  in  the  past  and 
our  tactlessness  or  stupidity  in  the  beginning  of  the  war, 
Ireland  was  not  suffering  under  any  grinding  tyranny 
which  justified  such  action.  Her  people  were  prosper- 
ous. They  were  free  in  all  but  separate  government. 
At  that  time  they  were  not  arrested  or  imprisoned  or 
coerced  for  political  reasons.  They  had  freedom  in 
their  faith.  The  English  people  had  not  been  hostile 
to  them.  There  were  ties  of  friendship  and  of  love 
between  many  English  and  many  Irish.  Their  writers, 
players,  painters,  had  been  accepted  with  enthusiastic 

333/ 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

homage  in  England.  Their  claim  for  Home  Rule  was 
supported  by  all  liberal  Englishmen.  In  spite  of  all 
that  happened  afterward,  their  cold-blooded  killing  of 
policemen  and  soldiers  went  outside  the  bounds  of 
legitimate  warfare,  even  if  we  grant  their  right  to  resist 
coercive  measures  by  force  of  arms. 

Their  way  of  argument,  as  well  as  their  way  of  warfare, 
was  cunningly  unfair.  They  adopted,  to  the  world, 
the  pose  of  an  innocent  people  suffering  Christian  mar- 
tyrdom under  a  bloody  and  ruthless  terror,  not  acknowl- 
edging that  at  least  in  bloodshed  they  took  the  lead, 
and  that  men  who  are  attacked  have  the  right  to  retali- 
ate according  to  all  human  law.  They  seemed  to 
beheve,  at  least  for  propaganda  purposes,  that  British 
troops  should  allow  themselves  to  be  ambushed  with 
impunity,  that  officers  or  men  should  allow  themselves 
to  be  murdered  in  the  presence  of  their  wives,  without 
a  gesture  of  self-defense,  that  very  grim  and  terrible 
deeds  might  be  done  in  the  name  of  Irish  liberty,  and 
become  ennobled.  In  the  name  of  Russian  liberty  the 
Bolsheviki  massacred  the  Tsar  and  his  daughters  with 
dreadful  cruelty,  killed  thousands  of  political  prisoners, 
committed  acts  of  great  atrocity  which  are  not  made 
white  as  snow  because  there  was  tyranny  under  Tsardom 
or  cruelty  under  counter-revolutionary  generals  of  the 
old  regime. 

Nor  did  Sinn  Fein  reveal  any  knowledge  of  English 
psychology,  by  imagining  that  our  people  would  be 
frightened  or  fought  into  surrender.  Every  ambush 
they  made  on  British  troops  was  a  setback  in  their 
claim  to  self-government,  for  it  choked  sympathy  and 
hardened  hearts.  Every  ''gunman"  they  sent  to 
England  to  burn  signal  boxes  or  shipyards  was  an  enemy 
of  people  striving  for  peace  with  Ireland.  The  English 
people  were  shamed  and  sickened  and  startled,  not  by 
the  ambushes  of  the  I.   R.  A.,  but  by  the  policy  of 

334 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

reprisals.  Their  desire  for  a  peaceful  settlement  was 
due  not  to  fear,  but  to  that  generosity  of  soul  which  the 
Irish  denied.  When  Terence  MacSwiney,  Lord  Mayor 
of  Cork,  died  in  Brixton  prison  by  hunger  striking, 
there  were  sarcastic  comments,  it  is  true,  in  the  House 
of  Commons,  but  in  the  streets  of  London,  when  his 
body  passed  with  a  guard  of  honor  in  Sinn  Fein  uniform, 
the  people  doffed  their  hats  and  were  pitiful.  And  in 
June  of  1 92 1,  before  the  King's  visit  to  Belfast,  when 
the  Irish  ambushes  were  in  full  swing  and  English 
soldiers  were  being  killed,  there  were  Sinn  Fein  proces- 
sions in  London,  with  the  Irish  carrying  the  Republican 
flags,  playing  their  pipes,  singing  old  rebel  songs,  and 
shouting, "  Up,  Sinn  Fein ! "  The  London  crowds  watched 
them  without  hostility,  without  a  scuffle,  even  with 
smiling  sympathy,  for  there  is  something  in  us  which 
might  seem  Hke  weakness  but  for  our  record  in  the 
Great  War,  and  it  is  not  weakness,  but  a  generous 
spirit  toward  liberty  and  those  who  struggle  for  it, 
even  though  our  own  government  is  for  a  while  opposed 
to  it  in  spirit  and  in  act.  I  doubt  whether  any  other 
people  in  the  world  would  have  been  so  magnanimous, 
so  "sporting."  I  doubt  whether  the  Irish  themselves 
will  learn  a  lesson  from  it,  for  in  spite  of  many  beautiful 
qualities  of  Irish  character,  they  are,  as  a  Celtic  people, 
unforgiving,  ungenerous  to  those  they  call  their  enemy, 
likely  to  receive  a  gift  as  an  insult,  to  answer  fair  play 
by  ill  will,  and  good  humor  with  ill  temper,  nourishing 
grievances  for  their  own  sake. 

So  it  was,  to  cite  a  trivial  instance,  when  I  went  to 
the  United  States.  I  was  scrupulously  fair  to  the 
Irish,  and  though  I  denounced  the  acts  of  Sinn  Fein, 
as  I  have  denounced  them  here,  I  also  denounced  the 
acts  of  "reprisals"  in  stronger  terms  still.  I  gave  the 
facts  of  Irish  history  as  I  have  given  them  here,  fairly, 
without  bias,  except,  perhaps,  leaning  a  little  to  the 

335 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

Irish  side — because  I  am  English — with  strict  regard 
to  historical  truth,  as  far  as  I  know  it.  But  the  Irish- 
Americans  shouted  me  down  in  New  York,  Chicago, 
and  other  cities,  and  they  shouted  louder  when  I  spoke 
fair  things  about  the  Irish  than  when  I  admitted  the 
injustice  of  England  in  the  past.  They  did  not  want 
fair  play.  They  wanted  passionate  unreason,  excuse 
for  violence,  more  food  for  hatred;  and  it  seemed  to  me 
that  their  love  of  Ireland  was  less  than  their  hatred  of 
England. 

All  that  is  in  the  bad  old  past.  As  I  write  there  is 
new  hope  for  Ireland,  as  for  England  and  the  world. 

On  the  eve  of  the  King's  visit  to  Belfast  to  open  the 
Ulster  Parliament  on  June  22d  there  had  been  Cabinet 
dissensions  which  still  belong  to  secret  political  history. 
Unionists  and  Coalition  Liberals  were  violently  divided 
as  to  the  future  policy  in  Ireland,  some  demanding  a 
new  offer  of  concihation,  some  urging  a  stronger  measure 
of  military  coercion  in  the  South  and  West.  The  Prime 
Minister  was,  it  seems,  for  coercion,  and  that  night  in 
the  House  of  Lords,  Lord  Birkenhead,  who,  at  the 
Cabinet,  was  for  concihation,  made  a  truculent  speech 
which  seemed  to  close  all  doors  of  hope.  In  reply  to 
some  Irish  Unionist  peers  who  pressed  for  the  enlarge- 
ment of  the  financial  powers  given  to  the  two  Parlia- 
ments of  Ireland  under  the  new  Act,  he  said  that  such 
expedients  were  useless,  that  there  was  war  in  Ireland, 
and  that  the  Irish  must  be  crushed  by  the  dispatch  of 
large  bodies  of  fresh  troops. 

At  the  same  time  the  Sinn  Fein  leaders  intercepted  a 
letter  dated  June  i6th,  from  Sir  Henry  Wilson,  chief 
of  the  Imperial  General  Staff,  to  Sir  James  Craig,  Premier 
of  the  Northern  Parliament,  regretting  that  he  could  not 
attend  the  opening  of  that  Parliament,  as  he  was  engaged 
in  dispatching  large  reinforcements  to  Ireland  for  the 
purpose  of  finally  crushing  the  Sinn  Fein  rebellion. 

336 


THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  IRELAND 

In  such  black  thunderclouds  of  political  strife  the 
King  and  Queen  set  out  for  Belfast,  risking  their  lives 
gladly  for  the  sake  of  peace  in  Ireland,  though  their 
Ministers  were  afraid  to  risk  their  jobs.  Belfast  gave 
them  a  great  welcome,  and  the  heart  of  Ireland  itself 
was  touched  by  this  courageous  act  and  by  the  King's 
speech,  in  which  he  declared  his  love  for  the  Irish  people 
and  prayed  that  they  might  work  together  in  the  cause 
of  peace.  The  text  for  his  speech  was  "Let  us  forget 
and  forgive." 

The  effect  of  this  call  from  the  King  was  instanta- 
neous throughout  the  world,  and  in  every  country  there 
was  an  appeal  for  a  new  policy  of  conciliation,  and  a 
stern  criticism  of  the  contrast  between  the  King's 
magnanimity  and  the  harshness  of  that  speech  by  the 
Lord  Chancellor,  "the  keeper  of  his  conscience." 

On  that  night,  June  22d,  De  Valera,  "President  of 
the  Irish  Republic,"  was  arrested  in  a  house  at  Black- 
rock,  Dublin,  but  released  next  day,  when  his  identity 
was  discovered;  and  on  June  26th  a  letter  was  dispatched 
to  him  by  the  Prime  Minister  of  England: 

June  24th,  1921. 
Sir: 

The  British  Government  are  deeply  anxious  that  so  far  as  they 
can  assure  it,  the  King's  appeal  for  reconciliation  in  Ireland  shall 
not  have  been  made  in  vain.  Rather  than  allow  yet  another  oppor- 
tunity of  settlement  in  Ireland  to  be  cast  aside,  they  feel  it  incum- 
bent upon  them  to  make  a  final  appeal  in  the  spirit  of  the  King's 
words  for  a  conference  between  themselves  and  the  representatives 
of  Southern  and  Northern  Ireland. 

I  write,  therefore,  to  convey  the  following  invitation  to  you  as 
the  chosen  leader  of  the  great  majority  in  Southern  Ireland,  and  to 
Sir  James  Craig,  the  Premier  of  Northern  Ireland. 

(i)  That  you  should  attend  a  conference  here  in  London,  in 
company  with  Sir  James  Craig,  to  explore  to  the  utmost  the  pos- 
sibility of  a  settlement. 

(2)  That  you  should  bring  with  you  for  the  purpose  any  col- 
leagues whom  you  may  select.    The  Government   will   of  course 

337 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

give  a  safe  conduct  to  all  who  may  be  chosen  to  participate  in  the 
conference. 

We  make  this  invitation  with  a  fervent  desire  to  end  the  ruin- 
ous conflict  which  has  for  centuries  divided  Ireland  and  embittered 
the  relations  of  the  peoples  of  these  two  islands,  who  ought  to  live 
in  neighbourly  harmony  with  each  other,  and  whose  co-operation 
would  mean  so  much  not  only  to  the  Empire  but  to  humanity. 

We  wish  that  no  endeavour  should  be  lacking  on  our  part  to 
realize  the  King's  prayer,  and  we  ask  you  to  meet  us,  as  we  will 
meet  you,  in  the  spirit  of  conciliation  for  which  His  Majesty  appealed. 
I  am,  sir,  your  obedient  servant, 

(Signed)     D.  Lloyd  George. 

This  invitation  to  a  conference  was  accepted  by  Sir 
James  Craig,  to  whom  it  was  sent  in  the  same  terms,  and 
De  Valera  replied  guardedly  that,  while  earnestly  de- 
siring to  help  in  bringing  about  a  lasting  peace  between 
the  people  of  these  two  islands,  he  saw  no  means  by 
which  it  could  be  reached  if  the  Prime  Minister  denied 
Ireland's  essential  unity  and  set  aside  the  principle  of 
national  self-determination.  Before  replying  more  fully 
he  desired  to  consult  with  representatives  of  the  "political 
minority"  in  Ireland. 

Those  consultations  with  the  Irish  Unionists  followed 
by  conferences  with  the  British  government  are  now 
taking  place,  and  it  is  the  prayer  of  the  English  and 
Irish  peoples  that  out  of  the  darkness  of  long  and  tragic 
strife  there  may  come  the  light  of  a  lasting  peace  between 
two  peoples  whose  union  in  liberty  and  in  affection  will 
be  a  promise  of  hope  for  the  youth  that  is  coming  to 
make  the  new  world. 

The  tragedy  of  Ireland  through  a  thousand  years  of 
history  may  be  replaced  by  the  happiness  of  her  future, 
free  among  the  federation  of  British  peoples,  and  in  the 
society  of  all  the  nations. 


IX 

THE   UNITED   STATES   AND   WORLD    PEACE 


IN  the  beginning  of  192 1  I  had  an  opportunity  of 
studying  at  first  hand,  and  with  extraordinary  opportu- 
nities of  knowledge,  one  of  the  most  important  questions 
of  the  world,  upon  which  the  future  of  civilization,  and 
especially  of  our  European  life,  largely  depends.  It  was 
the  question  of  what  the  United  States  of  America 
would  do  under  the  new  leadership  which  had  come  to 
her  with  President  Harding,  and  what  part  her  people 
would  play  in  international  policy.  That  question  is 
not  yet  answered  in  full,  because  the  future  holds  its 
own  secrets,  but  as  far  as  we  know  it  the  reply  is 
hopeful. 

For  whether  we  like  it  or  not — and  there  are  some  who 
don't — America  has  largely  in  her  hands  the  great  deci- 
sion as  to  whether  white  civilization,  as  we  know  it, 
and  as  most  of  us  like  it,  will  progress  in  an  orderly  way 
to  a  higher  plane  of  development  in  peaceful  industry, 
with  a  little  more  comfort  for  plain  folk,  with  a  good 
margin  for  the  little  things  of  art  and  beauty  which 
make  up  the  joy  of  life,  greater  security  against  the 
menace  of  war,  and  a  relief  from  the  deadening  weight 
of  armaments,  or  whether  it  will  fall,  as  some  European 
nations  have  already  fallen,  into  decay  and  disease, 
poverty-stricken,  underfed,  staggering  and  fainting 
through  a  jungle  darkness. 

If  America  withdrew  into  herself,  holding  herself  aloof 

339 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

from  the  world  problems,  demanding  full  payment  of 
her  loans,  refusing  extension  of  credit,  and  hardening 
into  antagonism  against  the  Allies  in  the  war,  it  would 
be  impossible,  I  am  sure,  to  heal  the  wounds  of  Europe. 
We  cannot  do  without  American  grains,  fats,  raw  mate- 
rial, and  manufactured  goods.  Who  thinks  so  is  a  fool, 
without  any  knowledge  of  world  conditions.  More  than 
that,  Europe  needs  the  moral  support  and  judgment  and 
friendliness  of  the  United  States.  The  League  of  Na- 
tions is  at  present,  in  spite  of  the  good  efforts  of  many 
good  men,  utterly  impotent  to  deal  with  the  vital  prob- 
lems of  world  peace  and  health  or  to  enforce  its  decisions 
upon  conflicting  nationalities,  interests,  and  rivalries, 
so  long  as  the  most  powerful  nation  in  the  world  to-day 
stays  outside  the  family  council.  That  is  as  clear  as 
sunlight  to  a  thinking  mind.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
entry  of  the  United  States  into  a  league  of  peoples,  or 
at  least  a  world  council  called  to  consider  the  way  of 
recovery  and  a  rebuilding  of  international  relations, 
will  make  real  what  is  now  unreal  and  give  immense 
strength  to  any  common  agreement.  America  can 
support  her  will  by  strong  argument,  because  we  are 
all  so  deeply  in  her  debt,  and  in  the  future  will  need 
desperately  her  surplus  of  food  supplies  on  easy  terms. 
Do  not  let  us  forget  that  the  United  States  of  America, 
being  made  up  of  human  beings,  might  be  more  than 
aloof  and  disinterested  in  the  welfare  of  Europe,  which 
is  bad  enough,  because  it  checks  the  chance  of  quick 
recovery.  Her  people  might  become  unfriendly,  hos- 
tile— swept  by  passion  if  we  played  the  fool  with  them, 
beyond  patience,  by  a  series  of  blunders,  the  stupidities 
of  statesmen,  the  tit-for-tat  game  in  the  Press.  She 
can  take  a  clear  choice  between  the  part  of  destroyer 
and  the  part  of  builder.  In  a  little  while  she  could 
raise  the  greatest  army  in  the  world,  in  a  little  while 
she  will  have  the  biggest  navy.     She  could  destroy  the 

340 


THE  UNITED  STATES  AND  WORLD  PEACE 

last  chance  of  civilized  progress  in  Europe,  and,  hav- 
ing done  that,  would  be  herself  destroyed.  But  that 
choice  is  hers,  if  she  likes  to  take  it,  and  the  power 
is  hers. 

She  can  choose,  as  I  beheve  she  will,  the  part  of 
builder.  It  is  her  national  quality.  Her  people  are 
builders  and  not  destroyers.  They  have  already  built 
a  great  New  World,  splendid  and  strong,  in  spite  of 
evil  elements.  Under  her  new  leadership  she  could 
help  to  build  another  New  World,  better  than  her  own, 
ours  as  well  as  hers,  that  New  World  to  which  we  all 
look  forward  with  the  coming  of  youth.  Will  she  do 
that.'*  In  what  way  will  she  help  in  reconstruction  and 
the  new  building  on  the  ruins  that  were  made? 

I  found  some  clue  to  the  answer  after  a  visit  of  eight 
weeks  in  the  United  States,  when  every  day  was  filled 
with  the  experience  of  meeting  large  numbers  of  men 
and  women  eager  to  get  some  trustworthy  evidence 
about  the  actual  conditions  of  Europe,  anxious  for 
some  guiding  principles  upon  which  their  country  may 
fix  its  faith  in  dealing  with  those  present  problems, 
and  keen  to  "put  me  wise"  about  the  stresses  and 
strains  of  American  Hfe  in  this  crisis  of  the  world's 
history. 

During  those  two  crowded  months  I  visited  about 
thirty  cities,  going  no  farther  west  than  Chicago  and 
Milwaukee.  Most  of  them  are  cities  about  equal  in 
size  to  our  nothern  industrial  towns,  like  Bolton  and 
Wigan,  but  with  more  comfort  for  the  individual  citizen, 
more  opportunities  for  social  recreation,  more  luxury 
for  the  rich  and  less  squalor  for  the  poor,  than  in  the 
same  type  of  town  in  England.  Here,  in  these  places, 
I  found  the  real  America,  more  than  in  New  York,  which 
is  so  vast,  so  complicated  with  alien  populations,  and  so 
cosmopolitan  in  its  interests,  that  is  has  no  single  and 
definite  character.     But  in  places  like  Worcester,  Troy, 

341 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

Scranton,  Utica,  Wilkes-Barre,  and  Detroit  one  finds 
the  typical  qualities  of  American  character  and  Ufe. 
I  met  the  people  of  good  standing — men  who  had  built 
up  their  fortunes  in  the  industry  of  these  cities  and  have 
a  local  pride  and  patriotism,  the  leading  manufacturers 
and  business  men,  lawyers,  doctors,  and  school-teachers, 
newspaper  proprietors  and  editors,  and  the  women, 
their  wives  and  daughters — who  organize,  ceaselessly 
and  strenuously,  the  innumerable  charities  of  the 
town,  women's  clubs  (far  more  important  than  our  own 
in  size  and  activity),  literary  and  musical  societies, 
Red  Cross  and  relief  works,  and  all  kinds  of  "leagues" 
and  labors  of  social  service. 

These  people  are  ''provincial"  in  the  sense  that  their 
experience  of  life  is  mostly  Umited  to  their  own  cities, 
though  many  of  them  go  fairly  often  to  New  York, 
spend  their  summer  hoHdays  on  the  coast  of  Maine,  or 
California,  and  look  back  to  a  European  trip  or  two  with 
abiding  memories.  The  women,  especially,  are  great 
readers  of  contemporary  literature,  and  do  not  limit 
themselves  to  works  of  fiction,  but  concentrate  more  on 
biographies,  memoirs,  and  books  of  an  ethical  kind  which 
contain  some  "spiritual  upUft."  Everywhere  they 
were  reading  Mrs.  Asquith's  autobiography,  startled, 
more  than  a  little  scandalized,  but  highly  amused  by  its 
indiscretions.  H.  G.  Wells's  Outline  of  History  was  a 
first  favorite  at  the  moment,  and  they  found  it  an  easy 
guide  to  the  enormous  adventure  of  the  ages.  Main 
Street,  by  Sinclair  Lewis,  was  the  "best  seller"  among 
their  own  novels,  and  with  photographic  realism  pic- 
tures the  narrow  interests,  the  local  scandals,  the 
small  world,  of  the  ordinary  American  citizen  in  the 
Middle  West  towns,  utterly  out  of  touch  with  any  other 
style  of  civilization,  knowing  nothing  and  caring  noth- 
ing about  problems  of  the  human  family  remote  from 
his  own  petty  and  selfish  interests. 

342 


THE  UNITED  STATES  AND  WORLD  PEACE 

I  did  not  meet  the  Main  Street  type.  The  people 
I  met — and  I  met  hundreds  of  them  in  those  brief 
eight  weeks — were  of  better  intellectual  standing  and 
wider  human  sympathy,  and  I  look  back  upon  a  long 
portrait  gallery  of  keen,  energetic,  thoughtful  men,  and 
of  kind,  frank,  generous-mannered  women,  who  were 
thinking  hard  and  talking  hard  about  what  America 
would  do  now  that  Harding  had  succeeded  Wilson,  and 
now  that  the  nation  had  to  make  up  its  mind  about  its 
future  policy  in  the  world.  There  are  milHons  of  such 
people  in  the  United  States,  and,  though  I  only  met  hun- 
dreds of  them,  I  believe  that  I  was  able  to  get  from  them 
the  general  convictions  and  tendency  of  thought  of 
their  class  and  kind. 

Those  I  met  were  nearly  all  Republicans.  They  had 
voted  against  Wilson  and  the  Wilsonian  policy,  partly, 
I  imagine,  because  they  believed  that  Wilson  had  flouted 
the  Constitution  and  the  instincts  of  his  people  by 
playing  "a.  lone  hand"  in  Europe,  without  getting  the 
advice  or  consent  of  the  Senate  and  Congress,  partly 
because  they  resented  the  length  of  time  he  had  kept  them 
out  of  the  war,  but  largely  because  they  believed  he 
had  failed  in  his  handling  of  the  European  situation, 
to  the  hurt  of  American  prestige  and  interests.  The 
immense  defeat  of  the  Democrats,  and  of  Mr.  Wilson,  was 
not  entirely  a  proof  of  desire  to  wash  their  hands  of 
international  obligations.  A  deep  sense  of  resentment 
against  Mr.  Wilson  himself  was  reinforced  by  irrita- 
tions with  American  administration  during  the  war, 
which  had  hurt  individual  susceptibilities.  As  a  friend 
of  mine  put  it  briefly,  the  question  asked  in  the  presi- 
dential election  was,  "Are  you  sick  and  tired  of  the 
present  administration.?"  and  the  answer  was,  "By 
God!  we  are!"  The  Irish-Americans  flung  their  weight 
against  Wilson  because  of  non-interference  in  the  matter 

343 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

of    Ireland;    the    German-Americans,    because    of   his 
share  in  the  peace  treaty. 


II 

For  some  time  after  the  war  enthusiasm  had  died 
out  there  was  the  same  lethargy  and  exhaustion  of 
emotion  in  the  United  States  as  had  overtaken  other 
countries.  No  new  impulse  had  replaced  that  emotion, 
no  new  national  ideal.  The  spirit  of  the  American 
people  had  drawn  back  into  itself.  They  were  dis- 
gusted with  European  rivalries  and  greeds.  They 
said,  in  effect:  *'Let  us  leave  those  Europeans  to  stew 
in  their  own  juice.  We  can't  do  anything  with  them, 
anyhow.  Let  us  get  an  administration  which  will 
pull  us  out  of  that  mess,  collect  the  debts  owing  to  us, 
keep  us  free  from  entanglements  and  obligations  with 
alien  peoples,  and  concentrate  upon  an  exclusively 
American  policy  according  to  our  old  historic  traditions." 
Not  an  unreasonable  policy,  if  it  were  possible. 

When  I  arrived  in  the  United  States  two  things  were 
happening  which  were  already  beginning  to  modify, 
among  the  educated  classes,  this  philosophy  of  national 
isolation  and  independence.  One  was  the  financial 
situation  leading  to  heavy  losses  in  almost  every  branch 
of  commerce,  and  a  rising  tide  of  unemployment.  The 
other  was  the  coming  into  office  of  President  Harding 
and  his  colleagues  and  the  anxious  questioning  of  all 
serious  citizens  as  to  whether,  after  all,  the  new  President, 
and  the  men  whom  he  was  selecting  as  his  counselors, 
would  be  equal  to  the  increasing  difficulties  of  the  gov- 
erning task.  Even  during  my  short  stay  I  was  able 
to  observe  a  change  of  view.  .  .  . 

Financially  the  United  States  was  going  through  a 
bad  time — worse  than  most  of  us  in  England  realized. 
Over  and  over  again  in  the  smoking  cars  of  long-distance 

344 


THE  UNITED  STATES  AND  WORLD  PEACE 

trains  I  overheard  business  men  deploring  the  heavy 
losses  they  had  suffered.  Prices  were  toppling  down 
everywhere.  Buyers  of  any  kind  of  stocks — copper, 
i  leather,  grain,  motor  cars,  railroads — had  been  badly 
hit,  in  many  cases  ruined.  Exporters  were  choked 
up  with  undelivered  goods  which  they  had  bought 
at  a  high  price  and  could  not  sell  at  cutthroat  rates. 
Manufacturers  had  overproduced,  and  the  cost  of 
production  was  so  great,  owing  to  the  price  of  labor, 
that  they  could  not  hope  to  compete  in  foreign  markets. 
There  were  five  and  a  half  million  unemployed  men  in 
the  United  States.  Real  distress  was  creeping  up  in 
cities  like  Detroit,  from  where  there  was  an  exodus  of 
factory  hands  back  to  the  land.  The  situation  improved 
a  little,  but  not  much. 

Now  the  American  mind  was  searching  around  for 
the  reasons  behind  this  sudden  *'slump,"  and  was 
inclined  to  attribute  it  to  local  conditions,  the  aggres- 
sive wage  demands  of  labor,  and  temporary  causes. 
At  first  the  American  "plain  man"  resented  the  sug- 
gestion that  the  simple  cause  of  this  stagnation  in  trade 
was,  and  is,  the  collapse  of  the  world  markets,  the  social 
rot  that  has  overtaken  Russia,  Poland,  Austria,  the 
heavy  burden  of  taxation  that  destroys  the  purchasing 
power  of  France,  Italy,  Germany,  and  England.  At 
first  I  found  people  challenge  me  when  in  my  lectures  I 
pointed  out  the  economic  impossibility  of  the  United 
States  existing  with  anything  like  the  measure  of  her 
present  prosperity  without  entering  into  a  close  trade 
relationship  with  the  European  nations.  They  were 
silent  for  a  little  while  when  I  stated  that  America  was 
almost  as  dependent  upon  Europe,  as  Europe  upon 
America.  They  were  inclined  to  shrink  back  from  the 
logical  result  of  my  argument,  when  I  urged  them,  for 
their  own  sakes,  as  well  as  for  white  civilization  itself, 
to  come  into  an  association  of  nations — never  mind 
23  345 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

whether  it  is  called  the  League  of  Nations — to  extend 
long  credits  to  the  poorer  countries,  to  lead  the  way  to 
gradual  disarmament,  and  to  aid  the  recovery  of  the 
world  by  a  free  exchange  of  raw  material  and  manufac- 
tured goods.  But  I  perceived  before  the  end  of  my  stay 
a  general  recognition  of  these  facts,  not  due  to  my  poor 
speeches,  but  to  pressure  of  events. 

The  American  mind,  at  least  among  the  thinking, 
reading  classes,  was  already  abandoning  the  idea  of 
''isolation."  The  well-to-do  business  man  in  places 
like  Worcester  and  Troy  had  already  reached  the  posi- 
tion of  the  high  financier  in  New  York,  that  America 
must  come  into  the  settlement  of  the  world  crisis,  and 
must  ease  the  burden  of  the  stricken  peoples  even  to 
the  extent,  if  need  be,  of  holding  over  the  payment  of 
their  debts.  The  women  had  come  to  that  conclusion 
before  the  men. 

Then,  after  the  sound  and  fury  of  the  presidential 
election  and  all  the  bitter,  personal  vendetta  against 
Mr.  Wilson,  there  was  a  sense  of  anxiety  about  Presi- 
dent Harding  and  his  administration.  People  were 
asking  themselves  whether  Mr.  Harding  would  rise 
to  anything  like  the  leadership  they  desired,  whether 
he  was  able  to  call  to  the  heart  and  soul  of  the  people, 
giving  them  some  enthusiasm  and  ideal  higher  than 
"big  business."  It  may  seem  sentimental  and  untrue, 
but  I  am  certain  that  I  am  right  when  I  say  that  great 
numbers  of  American  people,  after  temporary  reaction, 
are  craving  for  some  impulse  higher  than  m.ere  material 
satisfaction.  They  wish  that  to  be  secured  first — and 
they  see  no  security  in  the  present  state  of  affairs — 
but  beyond  and  above  that,  they  yearn  for  a  touch  of 
nobility  in  national  policy — for  some  high  leadership 
which  would  guide  them  in  a  spiritual  way.  They  did 
not  expect  that  from  Mr.  Harding,  though  they  found 
him  honest  and  a  man  of  good  will,  but  rather  "Main 

346 


THE  UNITED  STATES  AND  WORLD  PEACE 

Street"  in  his  mind.  They  comforted  themselves  with 
the  hope  that  there  would  be  good  teamwork,  and 
some  of  them  clung  to  the  name  of  Hoover  as  the  shining 
star  to  which  they  yoked  their  faith.  But  here  again 
they  hesitated.  Would  Hoover — the  man  who  organ- 
ized the  food  supplies  of  starving  Europe,  the  food 
dictator  of  the  world  (for  that  he  was) — play  up  to  the 
party  machine,  compromise  with  men  hke  Daugherty, 
the  new  Attorney-General,  and  be  tactful  with  the 
wirepullers  of  the  machine  which  breaks  any  man  who 
tries  to  put  a  spoke  in  its  wheels  or  give  them  a  different 
kind  of  spin?  They  were  afraid  that  Hoover  might  get 
out,  or  be  put  out,  before  he  had  gone  very  far. 

Secretary  Hughes  was  the  greatest  hope  of  the  Repub- 
lican party  in  the  field  of  foreign  affairs,  though  some  of 
them  thought  he  had  too  much  of  the  ''lawyer  mind." 
I  have  met  Mr.  Hughes  several  times,  and  have  had 
long  talks  with  him — not  for  pubHcation.  He  has  a 
penetrating  mind,  clear,  cool  judgment,  complete  in- 
tellectual honesty,  and  I  found  in  him  (what  others  are 
surprised  to  find)  a  humane  outlook  upon  fife,  a  sensi- 
tive sympathy  with  the  sufferings  of  stricken  people. 
Yet  people  doubted  whether  he  would  obtain  the 
allegiance  of  the  Senate  in  altruistic  ideals. 

So  many  told  me,  as  to  a  friend,  candidly,  and  I 
saw  in  this  anxiety  the  wistfulness  of  people  who  have 
been  disappointed  with  the  official  actions  of  their 
country,  felt  just  a  little  conscience-stricken  because  of 
a  failure  to  come  up  to  their  own  ideals,  and  desired 
earnestly  to  fulfill  their  duty  to  the  world,  whatever 
that  might  be.  They  wanted  to  get  on  to  the  plane  of 
idealism  again,  if  only  it  could  be  squared  with  reality 
and  common  sense.  They  would  even  raise  an  exten- 
uating word  for  Wilson — though  they  hated  him,  so 
many  of  them.  "He  did  put  up  certain  broad  ideals 
to  which  we  must  feel  our  way  forward.     Perhaps  his 

347 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

ideals  will  be  remembered  when  his  personal  faults 
have  been  forgotten."  Now  and  then  in  big  audiences 
I  heard  a  section  fire  of  applause,  or  isolated  handclaps, 
when  I  mentioned  Wilson's  name.  They  pitied  him, 
anyhow,  for  the  immensity  of  his  personal  tragedy. 

The  League  of  Nations  still  had  its  adherents,  and 
was  gaining  more  every  day.  I  tested  that  in  the  same 
way,  and  it  never  failed  to  get  a  quick  response,  espe- 
cially from  the  women.  But  they  would  prefer  to  come 
in  to  an  assembly  of  nations  called  by  some  other  name. 
It  is  a  matter  of  pride  with  the  Senate  especially,  which 
killed  the  League  in  order  to  kill  Wilson.  They  cannot 
accept  the  name  of  Wilson's  instrument.  But  they 
must  "come  in."  They  felt  that  in  every  place  where 
I  touched  the  pulse  of  public  opinion.  As  one  great 
American  leader  put  it  to  me — his  influence  extends  to 
a  million  people — "it  isn't  a  question  of  'coming  in.* 
It's  much  rather  a  question  of  'getting  out.'  We  are 
in  already.  We  were  in  when  we  sent  over  our  first 
transports  of  troops.  We  are  in  up  to  the  neck,  be- 
cause we  have  debts  to  the  value  of  five  billion  dollars. 
We  are  in  because  our  trade  depends  upon  the  markets 
of  the  world.  The  question  is,  how  are  we  to  get  out 
of  this  world  crisis  with  any  business  and  security  and 
honor."  But  that  amounts  to  the  same  thing.  The 
very  laws  of  economics  will  force  America  to  come  into  a 
council  of  nations,  and  by  the  power  of  her  natural 
resources,  her  immense  reserves  of  industry,  her  means 
of  granting  credits,  it  is  certain  that  she  will  take  the 
lead  in  the  reconstruction  of  Europe,  which  means  as 
much  to  her  as  to  ourselves. 


Ill 


In  nearly  every  section  of  American  society  which  I 
touched — I  was  unable  to  come  in  contact  with  the 

348 


THE  UNITED  STATES  AND  WORLD  PEACE 

factory  hands  and  working  classes,  which  was  a  great 
omission — I  found  a  genuine  friendship,  often  an  emo- 
tional sentiment,  for  England  and  Great  Britain. 
This  was  voiced  by  the  President,  with  whom  I  had  a 
personal  interview,  lasting  only  for  a  minute  or  two, 
in  the  White  House,  a  few  days  after  his  inauguration. 
A  number  of  visitors  were  wanting  to  see  him,  trooping 
in  through  the  open  gates  (shut  during  Wilson's  term 
of  office)  and  sitting  about  the  antechambers.  They 
were  Senators  and  Congressmen  from  the  West  and 
Middle  West,  an  old  general  of  Civil  War  days,  a  hand- 
some young  colonel  of  the  air-craft  corps,  several  ladies 
of  social  standing,  a  little  girl  sitting  with  folded  hands, 
looking  wide-eyed  through  big  spectacles  with  tortoise- 
shell  rims,  a  group  of  newspaper  men  smoking  cigarettes 
incessantly.  The  President's  secretary  chatted  with 
the  visitors  as  he  sat  at  a  desk  on  which  was  a  great 
bouquet  of  roses.  This  social  atmosphere  of  the  White 
House  was  simple,  informal — a  striking  contrast,  I  was 
told,  to  the  austerity  of  Mr.  Wilson's  time.  The  new 
President  was  giving  "the  glad  hand"  to  everybody, 
keeping  open  house,  breaking  the  autocratic  spell  of 
his  predecessor. 

One  of  his  secretaries  beckoned  me,  and  I  went  in  and 
found  Mr.  Harding  receiving  his  visitors — a  tall,  heavily 
built  man  with  a  powerful  face,  deeply  lined,  puffed 
under  his  eyes,  square  of  jaw,  with  a  good-humored 
mouth  and  kind  eyes,  and  silver  hair.  He  gripped  my 
hand  and  asked  a  few  questions,  and  was  a  little  startled, 
I  fancy,  when  I  asked  him  suddenly  for  a  message  to 
the  English  people.  He  laughed,  and  could  not  think 
of  one  on  the  spur  of  the  moment,  alluding  to  newspaper 
controversy,  and  bitter  things  said  on  both  sides,  in 
disjointed  sentences.  Then  he  spoke  earnestly,  with 
real  emotion,  I  thought,  while  he  still  held  my  hand  in 
a  strong  grasp. 

349 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

"Friendship  between  the  United  States  and  Great 
Britain,"  he  said,  "is  essential  for  the  welfare  of  the 
world.  Americans  of  the  old  stock  look  upon  England 
as  the  mother  country,  and  we  regard  that  always  as 
a  cherished  inheritance,  not  to  be  forgotten," 

What  the  President  said  was  told  me  in  other  words 
by  hundreds  of  other  people — I  could  say  thousands, 
without  exaggeration — and  with  absolute  sincerity. 
Senator  Knox  was  one  of  those  who  spoke  to  me  about 
the  misunderstanding  of  the  American  attitude  to 
England,  the  mistaken  idea  that  there  was  an  underlying 
hostility  likely  to  lead  one  day  to  war. 

"The  mere  idea  of  it  is  impossible  and  ridiculous," 
he  said,  and  he  mentioned  the  wave  of  indignation  and 
incredulity  which  had  passed  through  America  like  an 
electric  shock  when  such  words  as  "drifting  toward 
war"  were  used  (or  reported  as  having  been  used,  which 
is  quite  a  different  thing)  by  one  of  our  representatives. 
He  admitted  that  there  were  historical  prejudices, 
fostered  in  the  school  book,  which  created  a  bad  impres- 
sion in  the  minds  of  American  children,  hard  to  eradi- 
cate. But  that  impression  of  England's  bad  action  in 
the  past  was  counterbalanced  by  other  influences  of 
literature  and  tradition,  and  in  any  case  the  universities 
were  helping  to  form  a  fairer  point  of  view  about  the 
War  of  Independence  and  other  periods.  He  once 
astonished  a  fellow  Senator  during  a  visit  to  Windsor 
Castle  by  laying  a  bunch  of  flowers  reverently  before  a 
statue  of  George  HI. 

"What  on  earth  are  you  doing  that  for?"  asked  his 
friend. 

"I  am  paying  a  tribute  to  the  Father  of  the  American 
Republic,"  said  Senator  Knox.     "If  that  fellow  hadn't 
been  such  an  old  blockhead  w^e  might  still  have  been      ^ 
under  British  rule."  H 

The  only  trace  of  hostility  I  found  was  among  the      ^g 

350 


THE  UNITED  STATES  AND  WORLD  PEACE 

extreme  section  of  the  Irish-Americans,  and  certainly 
that  was  fierce,  unreasoning,  and  dangerous.  At  my 
first  lecture  in  the  Carnegie  Hall,  New  York,  I  had  only 
been  going  five  minutes  or  so  before  the  first  interruption 
began,  in  a  rich  Irish  brogue,  from  a  top  gallery.  I 
heard  the  words,  "Why  don't  you  take  the  marbles  out 
of  your  mouth?"  And  thinking  this  was  merely  a 
friendly  criticism  of  my  hopelessly  "English"  accent,  I 
squared  my  chest  and  spoke  louder.  But  that  was  only 
the  beginning  of  trouble,  deliberate  and  hostile,  to  what- 
ever I  said,  and  I  was  speaking  about  Austria,  and  not 
Ireland.  Amidst  a  hubbub  of  sound  and  fury  I  heard 
the  words,  "English  poltroon,"  "Cutthroat  English," 
and,  "What  about  Egypt .f*"  I  tried  to  tell  a  story  about 
a  young  Austrian  doctor.  Several  times  I  began  a 
description  of  his  suflPering.  Then  I  had  to  abandon 
him  to  his  fate.  Standing  alone  on  a  big  platform,  I 
heard  waves  of  tumultuous  noise,  and  could  see  in  the 
galleries  a  series  of  running  fights,  separate  skirmishes, 
the  pounce  of  small  groups  on  isolated  individuals. 
I  felt  curiously  far  off  and  aloof,  intensely  interested 
in  that  drama  which  seemed  to  have  nothing  to  do  with 
me.  Down  in  the  stalls  a  fat  man  wedged  in  his  chair 
was  bellowing  incoherently  until  silenced  by  his  neigh- 
bors. A  voice  below  the  platform  called  up  to  me, 
"We  have  sent  for  the  police."  Presently  I  went  on 
talking,  with  spasmodic  interruptions  from  the  galleries. 
I  was  able  to  get  through  my  address,  and  I  found  that 
any  simple  words  of  mine  about  England  and  Anglo- 
American  friendship  aroused  wonderful  applause.  The 
great  audience  desired  to  express  to  me  their  utter  dis- 
gust with  the  Irish  demonstration,  their  friendly  feeling 
to  an  Englishman  on  the  platform,  to  England  for 
whom  he  spoke  with  fairness  to  Ireland.  The  hostile 
element  was  in  a  minority  of  fifty  to  three  thousand  or 
more. 

3.SI 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

After  that  I  had  other  experiences,  as  at  Chicago,  on 
the  eve  of  St.  Patrick's  Day,  when  it  was  forty-five  min- 
utes before  I  could  finish  my  first  sentence.  Immediately 
I  stepped  on  the  platform,  the  din  began,  deafening 
and  menacing.  Fifty  young  Irishmen  shouted  orations 
at  me  from  the  galleries.  Two  hundred  or  more  hooted 
and  yelled.  In  the  top  gallery  a  gang  of  girls  catcalled 
in  shrill  unison.  The  men  were  angry  and  violent. 
They  desired,  it  seemed,  to  tear  me  limb  from  Hmb,  and 
fought  desperately  with  the  police  when  at  last  they 
were  ejected.  For  the  first  time  in  my  life  I  was  com- 
pelled to  accept  a  bodyguard  of  detectives.  They  ex- 
plained politely  that  it  was  not  so  much  for  my  sake 
as  for  theirs  that  they  wished  to  sit  by  my  side  in  a 
taxicab,  to  walk  with  me  on  the  way  to  the  hotel. 
"  It's  our  reputation  w^e  want  to  safeguard,"  they 
said.  **If  anything  happens  to  you  we  should  get  the 
kick." 

Even  on  my  last  night  in  New  York,  when  I  received 
the  greatest  honor  of  my  Hfe  at  a  banquet  to  me  by  a 
thousand  people  under  the  auspices  of  the  Allied  Loyalty 
League,  there  came  to  my  table  all  through  the  dinner 
hostile  messages  from  the  world  outside.  I  opened 
one  letter  and  it  said,  "You  are  a  dirty  English  rat." 
I  opened  another,  and  it  said,  "You  are  the  hell-hound 
of  a  dirty  race."  Outside  the  Biltmore  Hotel  small  boys, 
paid  a  few  cents  for  their  job,  distributed  leaflets  accus- 
ing me  of  horrible  lies. 

"This  man  has  insulted  every  loyal  American,"  said 
one  of  the  leaflets.  "All  who  associate  with  him,  dine 
with  him.,  or  honor  him  in  any  way  are  disloyal  Amer- 
icans.    This  man  should  be  deported  at  once." 

The  violence  of  the  Irish-American  sentiment,  the 
amazing  lack  of  reason  in  their  methods,  may  be  judged 
by  this  series  of  attacks  upon  me,  for  in  Ireland  I  was 
known  as  a  good  friend,  and  in  England  I  had  not  hesi- 

352 


THE  UNITED  STATES  AND  WORLD  PEACE 

tated  to  criticize  and  condemn  the  British  government 
for  what  I  considered  the  stupidity  and  brutahty  of 
many  of  their  actions  in  Ireland.  So  in  America  I  spoke 
honestly  and  fairly,  setting  out  the  plain  truth,  allowing 
all  that  could  be  allowed  to  the  Irish  point  of  view, 
pleading  for  reconciliation  and  peace  which  should  give 
liberty  to  Ireland  under  Dominion  Home  Rule,  if  they 
were  wilUng  to  abandon  their  guerrilla  warfare.  But 
nothing  that  I  said  made  the  sUghtest  difference.  They 
howled  at  me  as  an  Englishman,  and  in  their  pamphlets 
and  leaflets  made  no  secret  of  their  desire  to  force  a  war 
between  America  and  Great  Britain. 

It  had  that  amount  of  importance  that  it  was  linked 
up  with  other  sinister  movements — Bolshevik  and  Pan- 
German — and  with  the  persistent,  venomous  anti- 
British  propaganda  of  Hearst's  newspapers,  with  their 
immense  popular  circulation  among  the  masses  of 
working  people.  It  was  important  enough  in  its  in- 
fluence upon  unthinking  crowds,  unable  to  discriminate 
between  falsity  and  truth,  and  quickly  moved  to  passion, 
to  be  a  warning  to  the  British  government  to  settle  the 
Irish  question  rapidly,  sensibly,  without  temper  or 
passion,  with  a  return  to  sanity  and  statesmanship.  For 
so  long  as  it  remained  unsettled  there  would  be  this 
cancerous  poison,  spreading  ill  will  in  the  minds  of  a 
section  of  the  American  people.  Apart  from  that  it 
had  no  influence  upon  the  American  mind  as  a  whole. 
On  the  contrary,  the  unjust,  ridiculous,  and  ill-mannered 
methods  of  the  Sinn  Fein  minority  among  the  Irish- 
Americans  disgusted  all  decent  citizens  and  produced 
a  warm  reaction  in  favor  of  England.  An  Irish-German- 
American  demonstration,  Deutschland-go-Bragh,  as  it 
was  called  by  a  wit,  in  Madison  Square  Garden,  where 
disloyal  speeches  were  made,  was  followed  by  the  mon- 
ster counter-demonstration  at  which  General  Pershing 
and  other  speakers  proclaimed  the  loyalty  of  America  to 

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MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

those  with  whom  they  had  fought  in  the  war,  amidst 
scenes  of  enormous  enthusiasm. 

In  a  personal  but  wonderful  way  I  gained  by  the  same 
reaction  against  violence  and  lack  of  fair  play.  The 
Sinn  Fein  disturbers  of  my  meetings  were  never  more 
than  5  per  cent.  The  other  95,  angered  by  what  hap- 
pened, gave  me  tremendous  ovations  for  England's 
sake,  so  that  I  was  uphfted  on  waves  of  enthusiastic 
applause. 

IV 

America  has  many  difficult  problems  to  face,  some 
fears  haunt  the  minds  of  the  people,  inherited,  tradi- 
tional habits  of  mind  drag  her  back  from  a  free  vision 
of  new  necessities,  and  her  political  leaders  are  not,  on 
the  whole,  representative  of  the  best  instincts  of  her 
wisest  folk.  Her  difficulties  with  labor  are  intensifying, 
for  men  who  enjoyed  high  wages  and  became  used  to  a 
higher  standard  of  life  do  not  lightly  drop  back  to  a 
lower  scale,  especially  when  there  is  such  a  wide  gulf 
between  their  highest  wage  and  the  great  luxury  of  the 
very  rich.  Among  her  ahen  populations  not  quickly 
assimilated  in  the  melting  pot  there  are  dangerous 
currents  of  thought.  But  the  risk  is  being  minimized 
by  the  falling  prices,  and  wise  concessions  by  employers 
of  labor  in  many  great  industries. 

One  fear  she  has,  especially  on  the  Pacific  coast,  is 
that  of  Japan,  and  when  I  was  last  in  the  United  States 
there  was  uneasy  talk  about  an  ''inevitable  war" 
among  people  who,  I  think,  exaggerated  the  menace. 
It  was  that  thought  which  gave  aid  to  the  demand  for 
a  big  navy,  at  a  time  when  the  world  was  ready  for  a 
call  to  disarmament.  In  America,  as  in  all  countries 
anxious  of  great  power,  there  is  an  imperialist  group 
eager  to  acquire  new  territory  as  a  proof  of  power,  and 
now  and  then  one  hears  loose  talk  about  "clearing  up 

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THE  UNITED  STATES  AND  WORLD  PEACE 

Mexico,"  But  that  is  quite  opposed  to  the  instincts 
of  the  people  as  a  whole,  who  hate  the  thought  of  such 
adventures. 

The  poHtical  machine  in  America,  controlled  in 
Washington,  is  antiquated  in  its  views  of  life,  I  fancy, 
and  a  heavy  drag  upon  the  progress  of  liberal  and  gen- 
erous ideals.  At  a  time  when  the  whole  world  was  in 
need  of  free  trade,  including  America  herself,  it  was 
proposed  to  put  up  a  tariff  against  Canadian  wheat  and 
other  tariffs  against  foreign  goods — a  muddle-headed 
arithmetic  which  would  hurt  American  commerce  and 
limit  its  activities.  At  a  time  when,  as  I  am  certain, 
the  great  body  of  American  people  who  read  and  think 
and  feel  are  eager  to  help  in  the  reconstruction  of  Europe 
and  the  recovery  of  the  world's  markets  by  carrying  on 
the  work  they  began  when  they  sent  their  boys  to 
France,  or  went  themselves,  old  Senators  from  the 
West,  Congressmen  from  "Main  Street,"  are  harking 
back  to  the  policy  of  isolation,  calling  themselves  "  lOO 
per  cent  American"  and  believing  that  that  means  the 
narrow  selfishness  of  the  Chinese  wall.  They  will,  it 
is  certain,  try  to  pull  at  the  coat-tails  of  President 
Harding  whenever  he  wishes  to  take  a  step  forward  into 
a  larger  relationship  with  the  human  family.  They  will 
shout  to  him,  "We  put  you  in  to  keep  us  out!"  and  the 
ignorant  masses,  no  more  ignorant  than  ours,  but  more 
remote  from  Europe,  will  give  their  backing  to  those  old 
and  unwise  men. 

As  an  Englishman  I  ought  not,  perhaps,  to  write 
these  things,  yet  the  American  people  will  forgive  me, 
for  I  have  been  frank  with  them  on  all  things,  and 
candid  in  any  criticism  of  English  faults.  I  believe, 
too,  unlike  some  of  their  own  pessimists,  among  whom 
is  the  most  brilliant  brain  they  have  in  the  field  of 
journalism — my  friend  Frank  Simonds — that  liberal 
ideas  will  prevail  over  narrow  instincts,   and  that  the 

355 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

generous   impulses  of  the  intellectuals  will   move  the 
sluggish,  inert  mass  of  unthinking  folk. 

Steadily  through  this  year  of  1921  the  Harding 
administration  gave  unmistakable  signs  of  abandoning 
the  policy  of  "isolation"  and  of  coming  in  to  the  coun- 
cils of  the  nations  with  good  will  and  helpfulness,  as  I 
had  ventured  to  prophesy  after  my  visit.  In  spite  of 
the  apparent  inconsistency  of  voting  great  credits  for  a 
big  navy,  due,  as  I  have  said,  to  anxiety  about  Japan, 
President  Harding  intimated  very  quickly  his  intention 
of  summoning  the  Powers  of  the  world  to  a  conference 
for  the  discussion  of  a  practical  measure  of  all-round 
reduction  in  armaments  and  the  establishment  of  an 
international  tribunal  to  arbitrate  on  all  matters  of 
potential  dispute.  That  intention  was  fulfilled  in  July 
of  this  year,  when  the  President  made  a  definite  pro- 
posal to  the  Allied  Powers  for  a  conference  on  disarma- 
ment, thereby  making  a  practical  appeal  to  the  human 
race  to  abandon  war  as  an  argument.  It  is  a  good 
memory  of  mine  that  I  was  able  to  put  in  some  words 
on  behalf  of  that  proposal  at  the  Capitol  in  Washington, 
when  I  had  the  rare  honor  of  being  invited  to  give  evi- 
dence before  the  committee  of  Congress  on  naval 
affairs,  on  the  possibility  and  scope  of  such  a  conference. 

Before  his  great  appeal,  the  President,  acting  upon 
the  advice  of  Secretary  Hughes,  decided  that  as  America 
had  an  interest  in  the  question  of  German  reparations, 
it  would  be  logical  to  have  a  representative  on  the 
Reparations  Committee,  and  that  as  the  supreme  coun- 
cil of  the  Allies  was  dealing  with  the  world  affairs  which 
intensely  affected  the  interests  of  the  United  States, 
it  would  be  only  reasonable  to  have  an  American  am- 
bassador present  at  least  while  the  deliberations  were  in 
progress.  People  in  England,  as  well  as  people  in  Amer- 
ica, watched  these  moves  away  from  isolation  toward 
international  partnership,  and  drew  their  breath  a  little 

356 


THE  UNITED  STATES  AND  WORLD  PEACE 

and  said,  "Perhaps,  after  all,  there  is  a  chance  for  the 
League  of  Nations!"  Strange!  for  in  America  the  doom 
of  the  League  has  long  ago  been  sealed  in  yard-long 
headings   across  American   newspapers: 

"The  League  is  dead!" 

A  friend  of  mine,  named  Lowell  Mallett,  one  of  the 
shrewdest  observers  of  American  politics,  described 
the  psychological  effect  in  Washington  of  finding  sud- 
denly that  that  cry  may  have  been  rather  premature. 

"Solemnly  or  exultantly,  prayerfully  or  profanely, 
earnestly  or  indifferently,  one  has  heard  it  proclaimed  in 
America  every  day  since  Harding  was  elected.  Those 
who  desired  the  League's  death  have  announced  the 
consummation  of  their  wish  so  frequently  that  they  have 
come  to  believe  it  true.  Of  course  they  have  had  to 
presuppose  that  because  America  was  not  a  member 
there  wasn't  any  League,  but  they  have  been  quite 
equal  to  this  presupposition. 

"'The  League  is  .  .  .   I* 

"The  familiar  phase  was  broken  in  two  on  a  day  not 
long  ago.  It  was  the  day  that  President  Harding  and 
Secretary  Hughes  announced  their  decision  to  partici- 
pate, to  some  extent,  in  the  councils  of  the  Allies.  The 
suspended  exclamation  might  have  been  heard  in  the 
cloakrooms  of  Congress  where  our  statesmen  gather  to 
smoke  and  talk  about  themselves.  It  was  completed 
by  one  such  statesman  in  this  manner — 

'Alive!  My  gosh!  the  blamed  thing  lives!' 
'This  Senator  accepted  the  decision  to  participate 
in  Allied  councils  as  the  beginning  of  the  end  of  the 
struggle  that  has  been  going  on  under  cover  within  the 
administration  since  March  4th.  And  his  view  is  shared 
by  many  other  bitter  opponents  of  the  League.  It  is  not 
accepted  gracefully,  however.  It  is  fairly  safe  to  predict 
that  Washington  will  witness  the  bitterest  sort  of  a 
death  battle  over  the  question,  but  more  than  one  oppo- 

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it' 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

nent  of  the  League,  who  is  bravely  kissing  his  wife  and 
little  ones  farewell  and  preparing  to  march  forth  to 
take  part  in  that  battle,  is  already  admitting  that  he  is 
going  forth  to  glory,  not  to  victory. 

"For  they  are  not  bUnd  to  the  situation.  They  knew 
all  the  time  they  were  chanting  the  League's  requiem 
that  they  ran  the  risk  of  having  the  late  lamented  rise 
up  from  the  bier  to  ask  what  all  the  fuss  was  about. 
They  knew  they  could  only  keep  it  dead  so  long  as  they 
kept  Harding  convinced  that  the  people  of  the  United 
States  had  decreed  its  death.  Harding  in  his  campaign 
for  election  committed  himself  fairly  firmly  in  favor  of 
both  hfe  and  death  for  the  League.  The  opponents  of 
the  League  have  been  more  vociferous  in  claiming  it 
was  their  victory  when  the  returns  made  him  President, 
but  the  RepubHcan  supporters  of  the  League  idea,  while 
saying  not  a  great  deal,  were  equally  sure  that  the  elec- 
tion meant  nothing  of  the  kind." 

American  financiers  and  business  men  were  no  longer 
so  hostile  to  the  League  idea,  at  least  to  a  share  in  the 
councils  of  Europe.  For  the  sake  of  their  increasing 
investments  in  European  commercial  ventures,  the  time 
had  come  to  cease  playing  politics  with  international 
affairs.  In  the  twelve  months  preceding  June,  1921, 
three  hundred  and  fifty  million  dollars  had  been  loaned 
to  foreign  borrowers  by  private  American  capital, 
despite  widespread  economic  depression  in  the  United 
States.  As  Mallett  said,  "With  approximately  a  mil- 
lion dollars  daily  flowing  from  their  vaults  into  foreign 
fields,  American  bankers  are  fairly  unanimous  in  favor- 
ing a  policy  that  will  protect  those  dollars."  If  not  by 
the  League,  or  the  League  "idea,"  at  least  not  by 
isolation. 

A  mighty  whack  at  the  League  was  declared  by 
Colonel  Harvey,  the  American  ambassador  at  the 
Court  of  St.    James's,    in    his    first    pubUc    speech   in 

358 


THE  UNITED  STATES  AND  WORLD   PEACE 

London.  He  banged,  barred,  and  bolted  the  door,  it 
seemed,  upon  any  American  participation  in  any  kind 
of  League  of  Nations.  More  interesting  than  his  speech, 
however,  were  the  comments  upon  it  in  the  American 
Press.  There  was  a  widespread  expression  of  opinion 
that  the  ambassador  had  gone  beyond  his  book  and  had 
not  spoken  the  mind  of  the  American  people  as  a  whole, 
nor  of  the  Harding  administration,  which,  as  I  was 
informed  on  good  authority,  *'was  busily  searching  the 
dictionary  for  some  other  word  than  "League"! 


I  am  not  a  fanatic  on  the  subject  of  the  League.  I 
believe  that  the  general  good  will  of  people  and  their 
spiritual  renaissance  are  more  important  to  the  world 
than  any  machinery  of  international  justice.  Never- 
theless, good  will  itself  needs  an  organization  by  which 
it  may  express  its  ideals  and  give  orderly  effect  to  its 
agreements.  For  that  purpose  the  League  of  Nations 
provides  an  organized  system  by  which  all  nations  may 
come  into  conference  and  consider  their  national  prob- 
lems in  relation  to  the  rest  of  the  world,  and  gain  the 
free  consent  and  support  of  other  peoples  for  their 
national  interests  and  rights  and  claims,  while  consent- 
ing themselves  to  equal  rights  for  all  other  peoples, 
provided  they  do  not  inflict  damage  upon  the  family  of 
nations. 

It  should  be  a  parliament  of  peoples,  whose  power  is 
based  not  upon  force,  but  on  agreement,  at  least,  on 
moral  force  rather  than  on  physical  force.  The  decrees 
of  its  assembly  should  advise  rather  than  command,  and 
the  work  of  its  councilors  should  be  scientific  and  not 
political.  It  will  never  be  a  super  state,  dominating 
in  its  power  over  peoples  who  try  to  resist  its  decrees 
or  who  dispute  its  authority,  though  the  expression  of  a 

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MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

great  majority  of  national  representatives  would  have 
an  influence  not  lightly  to  be  disregarded,  if  they  had 
the  real  support  of  their  own  governments  and  peoples. 
The  failures  of  the  League,  in  so  far  as  it  has  failed,  have 
been  due  to  the  insincerity  of  delegates,  or  to  their  im- 
potence, because  while  dealing  with  the  world  problems 
on  lines  of  scientific  argument  the  statesmen  of  Europe 
were  dealing  with  the  same  problems  on  lines  of  passion 
and  political  intrigue.  That  weakness  of  the  League 
will  not  be  overcome  until  its  delegates  are  truly  repre- 
sentative of  their  parliaments,  so  that  when  they  speak 
their  words  are  responsible,  and  that  will  only  be  attained 
when  the  peoples  themselves  insist  upon  that  respon- 
sibility and  insure  its  fulfillment.  Another  and  fatal 
cause  of  weakness  in  the  present  League  is  that  it  is 
only  half  a  League,  or  at  least  incomplete,  with  many 
empty  chairs.  Without  Germany,  Russia,  and  the  United 
States,  no  proposal  or  agreement  on  affairs  aflPecting  the 
interests  of  those  nations  could  have  authority. 

In  spite  of  that,  and  of  many  other  limitations,  be- 
cause the  spiritual  state  of  the  world  has  been  at  a 
low  ebb  in  the  years  after  the  war,  not  rising  to  the  high 
ideal  of  international  justice  preached  by  the  leaders 
of  the  war  spirit  and  then  flung  to  the  devil  as  out- 
worn rubbish,  the  League  of  Nations  has  done  useful 
work.  Alone  it  has  upheld  the  banner  of  that  idealism 
before  the  imagination  of  the  peoples,  and  has  gathered 
to  itself  forces  of  plain  folk  who  believe  in  its  watchwords, 
though  some  of  its  spokesmen  are  cynical  and  others 
disheartened.  Outside  the  Assembly  where  the  talking 
is  done,  there  has  been  a  body  of  scientific  work  prepared 
by  experts  whose  enthusiasm  is  real  and  devoted.  They 
have  the  young  spirit  for  which  the  world  has  been 
waiting.  In  committees  formed  by  economists,  organ- 
izers, scientists,  of  many  nations,  among  those  forty- 
eight  who  belong  to  the  League,  and  of  some  who  do  not 

360 


THE  UNITED  STATES  AND  WORLD  PEACE 

belong  thereto  (like  the  United  States  of  America), 
keen  brains  and  untired  hearts  have  been  studying 
world  problems  of  health,  commerce,  wages,  hourt  of 
work,  armaments,  transport,  communication,  and 
finance,  not  in  a  political  way,  limited  by  national 
egotism,  but  in  a  scientific  way,  across  the  frontiers  of 
prejudice  and  rivalry.  They  have  been  learning  to 
think  internationally.  They  have  been  preparing  the 
groundwork  for  the  new  architecture  of  human  progress. 
They  have  actual  achievements  to  their  credit  for  the 
reshaping  of  international  relations  in  the  thoughts  of 
statesmen  and  financiers,  if  not  yet  in  law. 

The  financial  conference  produced  a  scheme  of  inter- 
national credits  which  is  the  basis  of  all  present  discus- 
sion in  America  and  Europe. 

The  Barcelona  conference  set  out  a  number  of  valua- 
ble methods  of  securing  freedom  of  communication  and 
transit. 

The  international  health  organization  will,  without 
doubt,  be  a  new  charter  for  the  prevention  of  epidemic 
disease  and  other  scourges  of  the  human  race. 

Another  committee  has  devised  means  of  co-ordinating 
preventive  measures  against  the  traffic  in  opium,  cocaine, 
and  other  dangerous  drugs. 

Recommendations  have  been  made  for  breaking  down 
the  world-wide  conspiracy  of  the  white-slave  traffic. 

Plans  have  been  prepared  for  the  institution  of  a 
permanent  court  of  international  justice,  and  com- 
mittees have  been  at  work  on  the  possibility  of  limiting 
armaments  among  the  great  Powers  and  prohibiting  the 
introduction  of  arms  and  ammunition  among  savage  or 
semicivilized  races. 

That  work  may  be  thrown  on  one  side  by  the  wicked- 
ness of  governments  or  the  indifference  of  peoples,  but, 
whatever  insanity  may  take  possession  of  the  world, 
that  work  has  been  for  sanity  and  well  done. 
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MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

The  United  States  of  America,  whose  late  President 
was  part  author  of  the  League  idea,  did  not  share  in 
that  work  officially,  and  their  ambassador  declared  that 
his  government  "will  not  have  anything  whatsoever 
to  do  with  the  League,  directly  or  indirectly,  openly  or 
furtively."  Experience  of  history  and  realities  of  life 
challenged  the  ambassador.  The  case  has  been  well 
put  by  Reginald  Berkeley,  secretary  of  the  League  of 
Nations  Union. 

Suppose  that  in  two  or  three  years'  time  a  serious  dispute  between 
two  great  Powers  threatened  the  peace  of  the  world — suppose  one 
broke  out  to-morrow.  Suppose  that  dispute  came  before  the  League 
of  Nations,  and,  whilst  it  was  still  in  the  process  of  settlement,  and 
in  spite  of  the  provisions  of  the  Covenant,  one  of  these  great  Powers 
suddenly  mobilized  its  forces,  thus  threatening  by  implication  at  any 
moment  to  break  the  Covenant  and  throw  itself  upon  its  opponent: 
an  act  of  war  against  the  whole  League.  It  is  surely  inconceivable 
that  in  such  circumstances  the  United  States  would  not  throw  in 
its  weight  on  the  side  of  the  League  for  the  preservation  of  peace. 
This  does  not  mean  that  the  United  States  would  then  be  liable  to 
send  its  troops  to  Europe.  Now  as  formerly  that  would  be  entirely 
its  own  affair.  But  it  does  mean  that  the  immense  moral  forces  of 
America  would  be  ranged,  as  they  have  always  been  ranged,  on  the 
side  of  law  and  order.  One  nation  alone,  however  powerful,  cannot 
kill  a  League  of  forty-eight  others  by  abstaining  from  it,  and  it  is  as 
certain  as  anything  in  this  world  can  be  said  to  be,  that  if  the  League 
proves  by  its  deeds  its  usefulness  to  mankind,  no  nation  will  be  able 
or  willing  to  stand  aside  from  it  for  long. 

Outside  the  League  or  inside,  America  cannot  and 
will  not  ignore  its  evidence  and  its  hopes.  President 
Harding  himself  has  said  so  in  clear  words.  "We  never 
were  and  never  will  be  able  to  maintain  isolation."  And 
again,  "We  are  ready  to  associate  ourselves  with  the 
nations  of  the  world,  great  and  small,  for  conference  and 
for  counsel,  to  seek  the  world's  opinion.  .  .  .  We  must 
understand  that  ties  of  trade  alone  bind  nations  in 
closest  intimacy,  and  none  may  receive  except  he  gives." 

362 


THE  UNITED  STATES  AND  WORLD  PEACE 

If  that  spirit  is  fulfilled,  it  is  good  enough.  In  friendly 
alHance  with  the  League  of  Nations — a  League  vivified 
by  the  interests  and  allegiance  of  millions  of  nobodies 
— America  will  exercise  her  influence  in  Europe,  and  share 
the  counsels  of  the  world.  In  England  there  is  a  growing 
allegiance  for  the  purpose  of  the  League,  rather  moving 
and  revealing  in  its  manifestations,  as  when  tens  of 
thousands  gathered  together  in  the  parks  of  English 
cities  on  a  summer  day  this  year,  and  proclaimed  their 
faith  anew  in  its  purpose  and  possibilities.  The  idea 
had  taken  root  in  little  houses  of  back  streets,  in  simple 
minds  stricken  by  the  misery  of  war  and  looking  for  a 
new  wisdom  of  men,  in  the  hearts  of  many  mothers  of 
boys.  They  came  out  in  their  masses  for  no  selfish 
interest  of  class  or  trade,  but  for  the  new  hope  of  human- 
ity symboHzed  at  least  by  the  League  as  a  supreme  court 
of  international  justice.  For  as  my  friend  G.  H.  Perris 
said  in  the  last  words  he  wrote  before  his  death  in  the 
service  of  the  League — 

Internationalism  is  not  a  negative  thing,  a  state  of  continual 
protestation;  it  is  a  positive  growth  towards  a  fuller  and  finer  life. 
This  is  but  a  first  hesitating  step.  I  look  forward  to  the  day — not 
in  my  lifetime — when  all  Nations  of  the  world  will  be  in  permanent 
combination  not  only  for  arbitration  instead  of  war,  for  the  regula- 
tion of  their  traffic  and  their  laws,  for  the  abolition  of  disease  and  of 
slave-trade,  but  in  the  effort  to  grapple  with  that  terrible  enemy — 
the  periodic  trade  crisis — and  to  join  in  turning  the  forces  of  nature 
to  the  highest  account  for  the  universal  benefit.  The  immediate 
task  and  the  distant  vision,  both  are  essential  to  a  full  life. 

That,  after  all,  is  the  idea  of  the  League,  and  though 
the  United  States  may  never  enter  the  League  itself, 
many  milHons  of  her  people,  as  I  know,  not  by  second- 
hand report,  but  by  what  I  have  seen  and  heard,  have 
already  given  their  allegiance  to  the  idea,  and  in  every 
city  of  the  United  States  there  is,  I  am  certain,  a  group  of 
men  and  women  whose  forward-looking  imagination  sees 

363 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

that  vision  of  world  governance  in  some  such  form  as 
outUned  in  the  dying  words  of  that  friend  I  have  quoted. 


VI 

Despite  the  strains  and  stresses  of  national  life,  the 
pride  and  egotism  of  a  virile  people  untouched  by  the 
sadness  of  the  Old  World,  the  noisy  expression  of  a  selfish 
"Americanism"  by  newspapers  and  public  orators,  the 
individual  men  and  women,  as  I  have  met  them,  in  the 
United  States,  have  a  profound  belief  in  the  increasing 
sense  of  human  nature,  which  will  abolish  the  old  bar- 
barisms, break  down  the  old  frontiers,  and  make  human 
life  cleaner,  more  efficient,  better  organized  for  general 
happiness.  People  who  believe  that  are  already  work- 
ing members  of  a  League  of  good  will,  and  in  so  far  as 
the  American  people  fulfill  that  spirit,  which  is  theirs  as 
a  national  faith  and  a  working  rule  of  life,  they  are  with 
us  all  the  way,  and  sometimes  take  the  lead,  as  in  the 
rescue  of  starving  people  and  the  call  to  disarmament — • 
a  lead  not  to  be  kept  if  they  are  directed  by  mere  self- 
ishness, or  misled  by  passionate  claims  and  conflicts 
with  other  nations  of  the  world. 

Quietly,  behind  the  scenes,  in  ways  that  will  never  be 
recorded,  American  business  men  have  all  through  this 
year  been  working  for  world  peace  on  economic  lines, 
and  their  financial  knowledge  and  advice  have  had  no 
small  influence  upon  the  policy  of  Europe.  I  have  had 
the  advantage  of  meeting  many  of  these  American 
bankers  and  business  men,  both  in  the  United  States  and 
England,  and  always  I  have  come  away  from  such  meet- 
ings with  the  conviction  that  these  men  are  not  only 
wide-eyed  and  alert  to  the  reaUties  of  international 
commerce,  and  free  from  the  inherited  hatreds  and  sus- 
picions which  clog  the  machinery  of  Europe,  but  as  far  as 
human   nature   permits   of  altruism   with   self-defense, 

3^4 


THE  UNITED  STATES  AND  WORLD  PEACE 

wonderfully  Idealistic  in  their  outlook.  I  mean  that 
they  want  to  help,  and  not  merely  to  profit.  They 
want  to  restore  the  health  of  Europe  as  well  as  to  safe- 
guard their  own  trade,  both  objects  going  hand  in  hand. 

That  was  the  spirit  with  which  the  delegates  on  the 
International  Chamber  of  Conferences  made  their  pro- 
posals in  London,  and  especially  of  the  group  of  experts 
in  association  with  Mr.  Filene.  They  based  their 
philosophy  of  international  finance  for  the  restoration 
of  Europe  on  the  resolutions  of  the  Brussels  conference, 
which,  in  their  conviction,  gave  to  the  world  the  first 
statement  of  the  necessary  steps  which  must  be  taken 
by  each  country,  in  order  to  start  Europe  on  the  road  to 
a  sound  financial  and  economic  condition.  The  most 
important  advice  they  gave  to  Europe  was  the  necessity 
of  a  strict  policy  regarding  taxation  and  economy,  the 
avoidance  of  additional  borrowing,  and  the  deflation 
of  currency.  Mr.  Filene  and  his  friends  made  plain  their 
belief  that  ruin  and  revolution  are  unavoidable  unless 
the  nations  of  Europe  disarm  and  economize,  and  they 
wished  this  belief  to  be  publicly  and  widely  expressed, 
so  that  governments  might  be  strengthened  in  action 
which  would  be,  inevitably,  unpopular  and  unpleasant, 
when  they  tried  to  square  the  illusions  of  public  hope 
with  the  stern  realities  of  economic  laws.  So  far  many 
governments  have  been  overthrown  by  their  people 
whenever  they  tried  to  enforce  such  a  policy  or  to  hint 
plainly  at  disagreeable  truth.  It  is  only  by  a  campaign 
of  truthtelling  that  economy  may  be  accepted  by  people 
still  thirsting  for  the  "fruits  of  victory"  promised  them 
by  politicians  in  return  for  votes. 

On  the  other  hand,  many  business  men  of  the  United 
States  have  not  been  grudging  in  their  promise  to  grant 
credits  to  impoverished  nations,  in  order  to  recover  their 
own  prosperity  of  trade  and  revive  the  activities  of 
European    laborers.     I    am    not    good    enough    as    an 

3  ^^5 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

economist  to  weigh  up  the  relative  values  of  the  vari- 
ous resolutions  adopted  by  the  London  conference  or 
proposed  by  the  American  groups.  I  can  only  judge  of 
their  general  spirit  as  I  judge  most  things,  and  that  is  by 
psychological  impressions,  and  after  meeting  the  Ameri- 
can delegates  I  had  a  sense  of  hopefulness  for  the  stricken 
countries  of  Europe  because  these  men  were  so  keen  to 
help,  so  quick  to  understand,  so  high  above  the  mere 
sordid  interests  of  a  little  trade  advantage  here  and  there. 
They  were  looking  at  the  problem  of  world  trade  as 
scientists,  without  prejudice,  with  a  knowledge  of  cause 
and  effect. 

All  details  of  finance,  however,  are  of  minor  impor- 
tance after  all,  compared  with  the  general  trend  and 
purpose  of  the  United  States  as  a  world  power.  I  am 
not  blind  to  certain  elements  of  weakness,  and  of  evil, 
and  of  danger,  in  the  character  of  the  American  people 
(as  in  that  of  all  peoples  not  exalted  above  the  ordinary 
frailties  of  nature),  though  I  am  an  enthusiastic  admirer 
of  all  their  splendid  qualities,  and  have  a  devoted  friend- 
ship for  them  which  nothing  will  change  or  weaken. 
Their  strength,  their  self-confidence,  and  their  sense 
of  youth  give  them  a  certain  intolerance  of  mind  to- 
ward those  who  differ  from  them  in  opinion  or  in  action. 
In  the  mass  they  have  no  use  for  halftones  of  thought  and 
sentiment,  and  do  not  compromise  between  convictions 
and  doubts,  or  balance  conflicting  evidence  in  dehcate 
scales  of  judgment.  They  think  in  blacks  and  whites,  in 
sharp  and  clear  lines,  approving  wholly  or  condemning 
utterly.  As  a  people  they  cannot  understand,  and  do 
not  like,  the  easy  tolerances  of  the  English  mind  which 
enabled  our  crowds,  for  instance,  to  smile  at  Sinn  Fein 
flags  passing  down  the  Strand  when  Sinn  Fein  gunmen 
were  shooting  British  soldiers.  That  seemed  to  the 
American  mind  intellectual  insincerity.  They  cannot 
understand   a  people  who  admired  the  Irish  for  their 

366 


THE  UNITED  STATES  AND  WORLD  PEACE 

resistance  to  British  coercion  (while  supporting  coer- 
cion), who  cHnked  beer  mugs  with  German  soldiers  a 
few  days  after  armistice,  who  allow  anarchists  to  talk 
their  folly  in  the  parks,  and  who  criticize  their  own 
government,  as  I  have  done,  with  profound  love  for 
their  country,  whose  faults  they  also  admit  and  ex- 
aggerate. The  American  mind  has  a  religious  reverence 
for  "the  state,"  which  sometimes  lends  itself  to  intel- 
lectual tyranny  and  to  a  hard  intolerance  of  minorities, 
cranks,  conscientious  objectors,  passive  resisters,  radi- 
cals, and  "reformers." 

Majority  opinion  in  the  United  States  is  all-powerful, 
and  too  powerful,  and  the  clear-cut  mind  of  the  American 
citizen,  with  his  straight  verdict  on  all  questions  of  life, 
is  hkely  to  lead  to  trouble,  perhaps  even  to  conflict, 
within  the  state  or  without,  when  it  comes  sharp  up 
against  a  challenge  of  forces  which  may  only  be  avoided 
by  delicate  compromise,  by  understanding  of  opposing 
views,  and  by  a  little  yielding  to  other  folks'  ideas. 
As  a  nation  the  American  people  are  self-conscious  and 
oversensitive  to  criticism,  at  least  in  comparison  w^th 
the  English  people,  who  have  a  weakness  for  self-criti- 
cism and  depreciation.  I  write  these  things  frankly, 
with  the  privilege  of  friendship  which  must  be  sincere 
without  being  fulsome.  But  I  have  written  at  length 
my  impressions  of  American  life  and  character  in  another 
book,  and  need  not  repeat  them  here,  but  will  only  say 
that  I  believe  with  all  my  heart  and  soul  that  the  spirit 
of  the  people  in  the  mass,  and  among  those  I  know  with 
individual  friendship,  is  inspired  by  a  splendid  common 
sense,  by  a  fine  simplicity  of  outlook,  and  by  an  instinc- 
tive desire  to  act  in  honor  and  in  justice  to  all  the  world. 
Despite  some  elements  of  hostility  due  to  foreign  in- 
fluence, among  groups  of  people  still  stirred  by  the 
rivalries  of  race  in  Europe,  the  heart  of  the  American 
people,  as  a  whole,  and  the  sentiment  of  most  of  its 

367 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

intellectual  leaders,  desire  friendship  with  the  British 
people  and  offer  it  with  generous  emotion,  believing,  as  I 
believe  and  know,  that  we  two  peoples  have  more  in 
common,  by  heritage,  by  speech,  by  law,  and  by  ideals, 
than  any  other  peoples  in  the  world,  and  that  any  con- 
flict between  us  would  be  a  death  blow  to  civilization 
from  w^hich  the  white  race  itself  would  not  recover.  In 
many  cities  of  the  United  States  I  found  a  proof  of  that 
faith  and  of  that  friendship  expressed  with  a  sincerity 
of  emotion  beyond  all  doubt,  with  a  generosity  that  was 
wonderfully  kind.  We  may  have  differences,  and  per- 
haps must  have  them,  and  the  evil  part  of  the  Press  in 
both  countries,  which  now  in  its  lowest  form  is  very 
evil,  and  other  forces  in  the  dark  caves  of  thought  and 
passion,  in  both  countries,  will  make  the  most  of  them, 
and  try  to  fan  up  hatred  and  passion  and  popular  sus- 
picions, but  unless  we  give  them  just  cause  of  quarrel 
by  some  madness  or  badness  in  our  own  future  leadership, 
there  is  a  body  of  opinion  in  America  strong  and  sane 
and  chivalrous,  which  will  overwhelm  such  treachery 
to  the  hopes  of  humanity. 

I  remember  on  my  last  visit,  in  a  small  city  a  thousand 
miles  west  of  New  York,  having  luncheon  with  a  company 
of  leading  men  of  the  community,  and  our  host  was  an 
old  gentleman  whom  all  the  others  honored.  He  was 
courteous  and  gay  in  his  old-fashioned  way,  making 
little  jests  to  keep  the  table  bright.  But  presently  his 
face  became  grave,  and  he  rose  and  raised  his  glass  and 
said  with  profound  emotion:  ''Gentlemen,  I  give  you  a 
toast:  To  the  deathless  friendship  between  the  United 
States  and  Great  Britain,"  and  at  that  all  the  men  rose 
and  drank  in  silence,  I  have  seen  many  demonstrations 
of  enthusiasm  and  friendly  tribute  between  our  two 
peoples,  but  somehow  that  scene  in  a  private  house  of  a 
Middle  West  town  always  comes  back  to  my  mind  as  a 
kind  of  symbol  and  pledge.     In  millions  of  other  houses 

368 


THE  UNITED  STATES  AND  WORLD  PEACE 

throughout  the  United  States  there  is  this  hope  for 
unbroken  friendship  between  our  two  peoples,  and  on 
our  side  we  have  in  our  bones  so  strong  a  sense  of  our 
common  heritage  of  history  and  tradition  that  we  are 
apt  to  presume  on  it  too  much  and  be  a  Httle  too  free  in 
comment  and  in  criticism,  as  though  actually  we  were 
members  of  the  same  family  who  may  dispense  with 
formal  courtesies. 

We  are  not  the  same  people.  Our  psychology  has 
many  differences.  Our  angle  of  vision  is  from  opposite 
sides  of  the  world.  Little  accidental  ways  of  manner 
and  speech  and  custom  may  irritate  one  another 
now  and  then.  But  in  all  large  things,  in  all  the  things 
that  matter,  we  may,  I  think,  count  upon  each  other 
and  work  together.  That  is  one  of  the  best  guaranties 
of  hope  for  the  future  of  the  whole  family,  unless  it  is 
spoiled  by  some  unknown  folly  waiting  in  the  years  to 
come  for  its  time  of  madness  and  of  ruin. 


X 


THE   CHANCE    OF  YOUTH 


AMONG  certain  common  Ideas  which  seemed  to  ger- 
minate and  develop  strongly  in  millions  of  minds  all 
over  the  world  during  the  war — minds  separated  from 
one  another  by  barbed  wire  and  deep  trenches  and 
poison  gas,  as  well  as  by  geographical  distances — there 
was  one  which  I  imagined  would  have  a  revolutionary 
effect  upon  the  world  when  the  war  ended,  if,  as  then 
seemed  doubtful,  it  ever  ended  for  this  generation  of 
men.  It  was  the  idea  of  youth  that  the  old  men  were 
responsible  for  the  massacre,  "the  bloody  mess,"  as 
they  called  it,  and  guilty  of  supporting  a  social  and 
political  philosophy  in  Europe  which  had  made  all  that 
inevitable.     Youth  hated  the  old  men. 

In  the  war  the  boys  who  were  ordered  to  go  out  on 
raids  when  the  chances  were  all  against  them  and  no 
useful  purpose  served,  hated  the  elderly  generals  of 
divisions,  corps,  and  armies,  who  sat  well  behind  the 
lines  and  engaged  in  competitions  as  to  the  number  of 
raids  they  could  report  to  G.  H.  Q.,  and  the  number 
of  casualties  they  could  record  as  a  proof  of  activity 
and  "the  fighting  spirit."  They  hated  these  same 
white-haired  old  buffers  who  held  chatty  and  cheery 
conferences  in  the  sunny  chateaux  of  France,  and 
arranged  bloody  battles  against  the  enemy's  strongest 
positions  with  a  light-hearted  optimism  which  invari- 
ably underestimated  the  enemy's   fighting  quality  and 

370 


THE  CHANCE  OF  YOUTH 

never  failed  to  incur  enormous  casualties  on  our  side  for 
no  perceptible  advantage  of  position  or  ascendancy. 
Young  officers  and  young  private  soldiers  cursed  the  old 
men  for  their  orders  and  counter-orders,  for  their 
"spit-and-polish"  discipline,  for  their  "eye  wash,"  and 
their  sham  heroics.  This  attitude  of  mind  was  not 
limited  to  British  soldiers.  As  far  as  I  can  find  out,  it 
was  prevalent  in  all  armies. 

But  the  detestation  of  youth  for  the  old  men  went 
much  farther  back  than  the  headquarters  staffs.  It  went 
back  intensively  to  the  elderly  civilians  at  home  who 
kept  reiterating,  year  after  year,  with  splendid  patriot- 
ism, "We  will  fight  to  the  last  man."  Or  in  French, 
^^  Jusqu'au  bout!"  I  have  heard  language  not  to  be 
repeated  about  those  old  gentlemen  in  Parliament,  in 
government  offices,  in  the  City,  and  in  the  great  indus- 
tries devoted,  for  the  time  being,  to  war  contracts. 
The  suggestion  in  one  mess  that  those  elderly  patriots 
should  be  used  as  sand  bags  to  prop  up  the  front-line 
parapets  was  received  with  uproarious  applause.  The 
conviction  that  in  the  next  war — if  ever  human  insanity 
"asked"  for  another — the  rule  should  be  made,  "Old 
men  first,"  was  unanimously  approved.  Young  poets 
of  the  trenches  wrote  mordant  sonnets  to  their  old 
murderers,  to  those  fat  and  prosperous  men  who  made 
fortunes  out  of  the  carnival  of  death,  to  the  hard-faced 
men  who  ordered  youth  into  the  shambles,  to  the  old 
ruffians  who  gained  honors  and  rewards  until  they  had 
flower-borders  on  their  breasts,  in  "cushy"  jobs  beyond 
sound  of  the  guns. 

This  condemnation  of  the  old  men  was  unkind,  and 
in  great  numbers  of  cases  unjust.  Fathers  bled  at  the 
heart  for  their  sons,  were  killed  themselves  by  a  slow 
and  agonizing  death  when  the  boy  they  loved  best  in 
the  world  went  down.  They  played  up  gamely,  so 
many  of  the  old   buffers,   showed  that  they   had   the 

371 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

stuff  of  courage  and  sacrifice.  But  broadly,  in  its  general 
accusation,  the  argument  of  youth  was  right.  The  old 
men  zvere  responsible  for  the  thing  that  happened. 

Not  consciously  and  deliberately  were  they  guilty, 
but  they  will  be  condemned  by  history,  as  by  youth, 
because  they  upheld  the  old  ideas  of  international 
rivalry,  the  old  traditions  of  diplomacy,  military  power, 
force  as  the  basis  of  argument,  the  narrowest  patriotism 
or  national  egotism,  as  the  supreme  virtue  of  citizenship, 
class  privilege,  and  caste  pride,  regardless  of  the  economic 
needs  of  peoples,  and  did  not  foresee  that  their  system 
of  governance,  or  their  obedience  to  that  system,  was 
bound  to  produce  the  monstrous  conflict  which  has  now 
been  recorded,  and  if  continued  must  lead  as  surely 
to  another.  The  old  men  with  the  old  ideas  cannot  be 
condemned  individually,  "for  they  are  all  honorable 
men"  (with  exceptions!),  but  they  must  be  condemned 
generally,  as  their  predecessors  who  burned  old  women 
as  witches,  or  defended  slavery  as  a  sacred  right,  or 
forced  women  and  children  to  labor  fourteen  hours  a 
day  in  their  factories,  or  (as  late  as  1830  in  England) 
sentenced  boys  and  girls  to  death  and  hanged  them  in 
batches  for  pilfering  and  petty  crimes,  caused  by  their 
own  economic  cruelties.  As  such,  representatives  of 
an  old  order  evil  in  its  morality  and  achievement,  and 
in  its  sinister  betrayal  of  new  ideals  and  new  hopes, 
youth,  during  the  war,  and  afterward,  brought  in  a 
verdict  against  them. 

They  have  pleaded  guilty.  Over  and  over  again  I 
have  heard  gray-headed  men  since  the  war  say:  "Noth- 
ing can  be  done  until  the  old  men  disappear.  The 
world  must  wait  for  the  rising  generation.  It  is  up  to 
youth  to  save  civilization."  The  failure  of  the  peace 
treaty  to  secure  any  permanency  of  peace,  the  betrayal 
of  the  League  of  Nations  by  those  who  had  paid  lip 
service  to  its  ideals,  the  regrouping  of  Powers  in  Europe, 

372 


THE  CHANCE  OF  YOUTH 

the  corruption  and  cynical  disregard  of  the  peoples* 
interests  by  the  old  politicians  who  still  keep  a  firm  grip 
on  the  party  machines,  have  still  further  convinced 
men  of  hope  in  a  better  and  cleaner  phase  of  civilization 
governed  by  reason  instead  of  passion  and  by  economic 
unity  instead  of  greedy  rivalry,  that  the  malady  of 
our  strife  is  incurable  until  the  old  men  pass  away  and 
youth  leaps  into  the  saddle.  I  am  one  of  those  who 
think  so,  though  youth  is  no  longer  mine. 

I  think  that  is  the  great  hope  of  civilization,  but  I  do 
not  think  it  is  a  certain  hope.  At  the  present  time  there 
is  no  assurance  that  the  young  men  who  were  in  the  war 
and  came  back  again,  or  were  young  enough  to  escape 
the  experience,  are  going  to  lead  the  world  forward  to  a 
new  plane  of  material  and  spiritual  quality.  What  has 
youth  done  since  the  war.?  In  what  way  has  it  carried 
out  its  challenge.?  As  Herbert  Hoover  said  to  me 
sadly,  in  New  York,  when  I  expressed  my  hope,  "Youth 
has  been  busy  re-electing  the  old  men."  And  that  is 
true,  in  all  countries  that  I  know.  The  old  men  are 
still  in  command,  supported  by  the  young  men.  The 
very  men  most  cursed  and  damned  by  youth  have 
received  their  allegiance.  The  House  of  Commons 
in  England  is  still,  at  the  time  I  write,  filled  with  "the 
hard-faced  men  who  did  extremely  well  out  of  the  war." 
By-elections  have  not  brought  a  younger,  fresher 
type  to  the  fore.  General  Townshend,  "the  hero  of 
Kut,"  hated  by  all  the  men  who  slogged  back  through 
the  sun-baked  desert,  fainting  and  dying  as  prisoners 
of  the  Turk,  while  he  received  all  courtesies  and  com- 
forts on  the  isle  of  Prinkipo,  was  one  of  those  sent  as 
a  new  member  to  the  House,  where  in  his  speeches  on 
Ireland  he  revealed  the  Prussianism  of  the  brass-hat 
brain.  The  Antiwaste  candidates  brought  in  by 
triumphant  majorities  as  a  protest  against  the  insane 
and  callous  betrayal  of  national  security  by  the  Coali- 

373 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

tion  were,  for  the  most  part,  not  young  men  of  ardent 
ideals,  but  bald-headed,  pot-beHied  old  reactionaries, 
scared  by  the  thought  of  being  more  heavily  taxed, 
and  eager  to  beat  down  the  workingman  in  his  stand- 
ard of  life  to  the  degradation  of  tame  and  cheap 
labor  by  which  their  own  profits  would  be  increased. 
Winston  Churchill,  imperial  gambler,  the  advocate  of 
diastrous  adventures,  the  most  reckless  spendthrift 
of  public  money  in  profitless  campaigns,  remained  as 
a  maker  of  trouble  three  years  after  war,  and  in  the 
pages  of  Punchy  which  made  a  hero  of  him,  his  plump, 
smiHng  face,  under  absurd  and  clownish  hats,  failed 
to  arouse  the  fury  of  youth  by  its  self-complacent  smirk. 
Lord  Curzon,  with  his  narrow,  mid-Victorian  mind,  his 
impregnable  conceit,  still  conducted  the  foreign  policy 
of  a  people  who  had  bled  white  because  men  hke  him- 
self had  controlled  their  destiny.  In  France,  in  Italy, 
in  Germany  (though  less  in  Germany)  the  old  type 
of  brain,  heirs  to  the  old  traditions,  rearranged  the 
policy  and  structure  of  Europe  and  made  a  new  and 
ghastly  mess  of  it.  Where  was  youth?  What  was  it 
doing? 

II 

As  I  have  described  elsewhere  in  this  book,  youth 
was  doing  a  lot  of  dancing,  making  up  for  lost  time  in 
the  fun  of  life,  not  worrying  much  about  the  future,  not 
worrying  at  all  about  the  damned  old  past.  That  was 
all  right.     That  was  the  privilege  and  nature  of  youth. 

But  many  of  us  expected  that,  in  so  far  as  youth  was 
active,  thoughtful,  interested  in  the  affairs  of  life  out- 
side the  desire  for  good  fun,  it  would  reveal  itself  on 
new  lines  and  moving  in  a  hopeful  direction  toward  a 
new  philosophy.  We  expected  that  those  who  had 
cursed  the  folly  of  the  war  so  heartily  would  at  least 
depart  from  that  particular  kind  of  folly,  and  that  those 

-.374 


THE  CHANCE  OF  YOUTH 

who  had  looked  forward  to  a  new  era  of  common  sense, 
and  of  liberty,  would  stand  for  those  ideals. 

Looking  around  the  world,  what  did  one  see  in  the 
way  of  youth's  adventure?  In  Ireland  one  saw,  cer- 
tainly, an  intense,  ardent,  fanatical  demand  for  national 
liberty,  not  without  a  spiritual  virtue,  because  the  youth 
of  Ireland  was  willing  to  die  for  its  faith,  and  did  die, 
on  the  scaffold  and  in  the  streets,  with  heroic  courage  for 
Ireland's  sake,  as  they  truly  thought.  But  they  adopted 
old,  bloody,  and  evil  methods,  as  old  as  sin.  If  this  Irish 
youth  had  put  up  some  form  of  passive  resistance  to  a 
governance  they  hated,  if  they  had  relied  only  on  spirit- 
ual force,  or  Christian  sacrifice,  according  to  their 
faith,  they  would,  I  am  certain,  have  captured  the 
allegiance  of  all  lovers  of  liberty  in  England  as  in  all 
countries,  and  would  have  gained  their  hearts'  desire 
more  rapidly,  more  certainly,  and  more  completely. 
No  power  on  earth,  and  least  of  all  England,  whose 
people  are  instinctively  on  the  side  of  liberty,  could  have 
resisted  their  spirit,  if  revealed  in  that  way.  But  Irish 
youth  did  not  leap  forward  to  a  new  idea  or  a  new  way. 
They  went  back  to  "cave-man  stuff."  Their  methods 
of  warfare  were  as  far  back  as  those  of  ancient  Britons 
or  of  paleoHthic  men,  though  they  had  modern  weapons 
for  their  killing.  They  laid  traps  for  their  enemy — 
our  soldiers — and  shot  them  to  pieces.  They  were  as 
cruel  as  dogs  of  hell,  some  of  those  Irish  lads  who  shot 
men  before  the  eyes  of  their  women,  and  shot  women 
who  were  friendly  to  our  men.  Their  burnings  of 
signal  boxes,  warehouses,  docks,  in  England  as  well  as 
Ireland,  their  execution  in  cold  blood  of  men  whom  they 
labeled,  rightly  or  wrongly,  as  "spies,"  were  not  worse, 
perhaps,  than  what  has  been  done  by  other  people 
fighting  for  national  liberty,  but  were  not  any  advance 
in  spiritual  methods  or  in  the  code  of  war,  since  the  time 
of  the  anthropoid  ape  fighting  for  the  liberty  of  his  rock^ 

375 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

dwelling,  or  of  Russian  Bolsheviki  fighting  for  the 
liberty  of  Soviet  governance.  The  spiritual  faith  of 
the  Irish  people,  wonderful  through  many  centuries, 
was  spoiled  by  the  savagery  of  those  young  gunmen. 

On  the  other  side  were  the  Black-and-Tans.  Was 
that  service  good  enough  for  English  and  Scottish  youth 
which  had  fought  for  the  liberty  of  the  world  in  France 
and  many  other  fields.''  Was  a  guinea  a  day  a  decent 
excuse  to  suppress  the  claim  of  a  little  nation  for  self- 
government  .f'  Was  their  job  of  counter-terror,  repri- 
sals, an  eye  for  an  eye,  a  tooth  for  a  tooth,  a  creamery 
for  a  barracks,  a  private  house  of  a  maiden  lady  for 
the  bombing  of  a  patrol,  a  step  forward  by  youth  to 
the  new  hope  of  the  world,  after  a  war  to  end  war,  a 
war  to  stamp  out  militarism? 

In  Italy  youth  was  active.  When  I  happened  to  be 
there  the  youth  of  the  masses  had  organized  itself  into 
bands  of  communists,  sacking  factories  and  shops, 
terrorizing  respectable  citizens,  raising  the  red  flag  with 
a  call  to  revolution.  Then  the  youth  of  the  classes 
organized  a  counter-terror,  under  the  name  of  Fascisti, 
and  those  White  Guards  beat  unarmed  men  to  death, 
smashed  up  the  furniture  in  restaurants,  let  loose  revol- 
vers in  a  casual  way,  fell  in  gangs  upon  political  oppo- 
nents, and  surrounded  the  polHng  booths  with  murder 
in  their  hearts  and  in  their  hands,  for  those  who  might 
dare  to  vote  against  them.  Nothing  new  in  all  that! 
Only  a  hark-back  to  the  days  of  Dante,  of  Bianchi  and 
Negri,  Montague  and  Capulets,  when  out  of  dark 
courtyards  in  Florence,  Padua,  and  Verona  young 
noblemen  and  their  retainers  clashed  with  their  rival 
houses,  and  spitted  each  other  on  their  swords,  and 
stabbed  each  other  through  the  throat,  and  did  not  settle 
any  argument.  Must,  then,  the  vitality  and  courage  of 
youth  still  find  their  outlet  in  these  old-fashioned  ways? 
Is  youth  not  moving  forward,  but  rather  going  back  to 

376 


THE  CHANCE  OF  YOUTH 

liberated  passion,  the  code  of  the  Elizabethan  swash- 
buckler, the  young  bravado  with  a  quick  turn  of  the 
wrist,  the  days  when  every  man  was  a  law  to  himself 
and  very  free  in  his  judgment? 

Less  than  three  years  had  passed  since  France  listened 
with  a  strange  wonder,  as  in  the  presence  of  a  blessed 
miracle,  to  the  silence  that  followed  the  long  laboring 
of  guns.  The  hospitals  were  still  filled  with  the  wreckage 
of  young  men  maimed  horribly,  blinded,  shell-shocked. 
Across  France  was  the  belt  of  horror  .  .  .  when  Aristide 
Briand  called  up  the  1919  class  to  march,  if  need  be,  into 
the  Ruhr,  to  enforce  the  payment  of  indemnities.  They 
were  lads  of  twenty-two.  All  of  them  had  been  witnesses 
of  the  misery  of  war,  which  had  robbed  them  of  fathers, 
elder  brothers,  so  many  comrades.  But  I  am  told  by 
Frenchmen  that  many  of  those  lads  looked  forward  to 
''trouble"  with  the  Germans  hopefully.  They  wanted 
a  taste  of  war,  a  little  street  fighting,  work  with  machine 
guns  and  bayonets. 

An  American  friend  of  mine  went  for  a  tour  through 
the  Belgian  battlefields  not  long  after  the  silence  of  the 
guns.  Those  fields  had  not  yet  been  cleaned  up.  The 
unburied  dead  still  lay  there  amidst  the  chaos  of  broken 
weapons,  unexploded  shells,  gun  wheels,  the  rags  and 
tatters  of  uniforms,  sand  bags,  the  litter  of  the  life  and 
death  that  had  passed.  A  young  Belgian  officer  was 
his  guide.  Some  mention  was  made  of  Holland,  and 
instantly  the  Belgian  officer  "went  up  into  the  air" 
(as  the  American  said),  and  in  a  blaze  of  passion  declared 
that  Belgium  ought  to  knock  hell  out  of  Holland.  He 
wanted  more  war.  The  ruin  in  which  he  stood  had  not 
satisfied  him. 

Over  in  the  United  States  there  was  no  ruin.     In  the 

university  of  Yale  there  was  a  crowd  of  youth  whose 

knowledge  of  war  was  limited  to  newspaper  reports  and 

the  talk  of  older  men  who  had  been  to  France  and  back 

25  377 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

again,  and  the  sight  of  long  banners  in  American  halls 
spangled  with  golden  stars  for  those  who  died  in  action. 
I  had  luncheon  with  some  of  the  undergraduates — a 
fresh  and  cheery  ^' bunch"  of  men.  One  of  them,  rather 
older  than  the  others,  had  been  in  the  marines  and  had 
served  in  France.  He  had  a  fine  gravity,  and  spoke 
thoughtfully  as  I  walked  with  him  alone  after  the 
luncheon  party. 

"What  do  those  fellows  think  of  the  war?"  I  asked 
him. 

He  glanced  at  me  sideways. 

''Which  one?     The  last,  or  the  next?" 

When  I  cried  out  against  that  "next,"  he  told  me 
that  most  of  the  Yale  men  who  had  been  too  young  to 
get  into  the  war  were  just  kicking  themselves  for  losing 
that  experience.  They  were  jealous  of  their  elder 
brothers.  They,  too,  wanted  to  be  captains  of  air-craft, 
machine  gunners,  infantry  officers.  They  wanted  the 
great  adventure  of  it  all.  "Of  course  they  don't  under- 
stand," he  said. 

I  told  him  that  what  he  was  telling  me  was  the  worst 
thing  I  had  heard  in  the  United  States,  and  he  grinned 
when  he  said,  "That's  so!" 

So  before  the  old  trenches  have  silted  in  and  the  ruin 
has  been  cleared  away,  the  youth  of  the  world  is  looking 
forward  to  "the  great  adventure"  again!  Their  vitality, 
their  pluck,  the  desire  of  youth  to  get  out  of  the  humdrum 
boredom  of  everyday  life  lure  them  on  to  the  drama  of 
war,  in  spite  of  the  recent  experience  of  war's  enormous 
tragedy,  the  aftermath  of  its  ruin,  the  bloodcurdling 
tales  of  men  who  came  back  from  the  hunting  fields  of 
death.  If  that  were  true  of  youth  everywhere,  then  it 
is  futile  to  hand  on  to  them  the  experience  of  agony, 
or  the  lessons  of  that  last  war's  folly,  or  the  certainty 
that  civilization  itself  will  suffer  shipwreck  if  another 
happens  on  the  grand  scale.     If  I  thought  youth  were 

378 


THE  CHANCE  OF  YOUTH 

incorrigible  in  that  way,  I  for  one  should  abandon  hope 
of  any  step  forward  by  the  human  race. 

I  have  not  abandoned  hope  yet,  though  I  confess 
that,  so  far,  youth  is  disappointing,  slow  to  seize  its 
chance,  reactionary  in  its  present  mood,  if  judged  only 
by  surface  appearances.  What  is  happening  below  the 
surface,  in  the  subconscious  minds  of  young  men  who 
are  thinking  out,  not  consciously  or  deliberately,  but 
in  a  groping,  secretive  way,  the  line  of  action  ahead  of 
them.''  It  is  hard  to  find  that  out.  I  try  to  get  a  lead 
from  Oxford,  where  the  new  men  are  being  formed, 
perhaps,  for  the  next  phase  of  Enghsh  history,  unless,  as 
may  be  more  probable,  they  come  from  less  privileged 
places.  But  the  undergraduates  at  Oxford  do  not  give 
me  more  encouragement  than  those  at  Yale. 

''What  do  you  talk  about?"  I  ask  some  of  them, 
and  their  answer  is,  "Just  the  usual  things — college 
sports,  personalities,  dances,  motor  cars,  the  Australian 
cricketers,  all  that  sort  of  tosh." 

"Politics.?" 

Not  much  of  that.  They  glance  at  the  headlines  of 
the  Daily  Mail.  They  don't  bother  to  wade  through 
Parliamentary  reports,  unless  they  have  to  mug  them 
up  for  an  insincere  debate  in  which  they  speak  to  a  brief. 
Of  course  there  is  a  political  crowd.  There  are  clubs  in 
which  the  political  and  economical  problems  of  the  world 
are  discussed  with  a  certain  amount  of  intensity,  but 
without  any  real  conviction  or  any  new  school  of  thought. 
The  old  traditions  prevail, — the  belief  that  a  pohtical 
career  depends  upon  party  patronage,  and  is  the  same 
old  game  of  "ins"  and  "outs."  Men  discuss  whether 
it  will  be  better  to  link  up  with  the  Coalition  or  the 
Independent  Liberals,  or  even  with  labor,  for  the  sake  of 
a  career,  office,  and  rewards.  There  is  no  sign,  except 
among  a  few  wild  birds,  of  soaring  clear  away  from  the 
old  party  groups  to  a  new  political  philosophy.     There  is 

379 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

no  Oxford  Movement,  it  seems,  which  will  change  the 
current  of  English  Ufe.  The  men  fall  naturally  into  the 
old  divisions  of  class  prejudice  and  tradition.  The 
Ruskin  College  men  are  still  fair  game  because  they  dress 
badly,  drop  their  h's,  utter  crude  nonsense  round  the 
Martyrs'  Memorial,  and  ask  for  trouble,  and  get  it.  At 
the  beginning  of  the  coal  conflict,  when  Lloyd  George 
revived  his  ''Defense  Force"  to  put  down  any  civil 
disorder  that  might  arise  among  millions  of  unemployed 
men,  Oxford  undergraduates  volunteered  with  their 
motor  bikes,  and  were  ready  for  service  on  the  side  of 
their  own  class,  without  heartburnings  as  to  the  rights 
of  laboring  men  to  resist  *'wage  cuts"  which  were 
afterward  acknowledged  to  be  too  severe  even  by  the 
owners  who  had  issued  them.  No  message  came  from 
young  Oxford  on  behalf  of  Irish  peace  or  in  favor  of  a 
wiser  policy  of  international  peace — or  in  protest  against 
a  government  leading  the  nation  to  the  edge  of  economic 
ruin.  Oxford  remained  a  sanctuary  aloof  from  the  stress 
and  strain  of  social  England,  cut  off  from  the  running 
tide  of  popular  thought,  and  exclusively  interested  in 
the  work  and  pleasure  of  university  life.  That,  at  least, 
was  the  report  given  to  me  by  some  of  the  undergrad- 
uates, surprised  themselves  that  the  immense  convul- 
sion of  war  in  which  they  had  been  caught  up  should 
leave  the  spirit  of  Oxford  so  untouched  and  unchanged, 
as  far  as  they  could  see.  Perhaps  they  did  not  see  very 
far.  It  seems  to  me  certain  that  those  undergraduates 
have  a  diflPerent  outlook  on  life  from  their  predecessors 
of  1913,  and  that,  unknown  to  themselves,  they  belong 
to  a  different  epoch,  utterly  divorced  in  its  instincts 
and  impulses  from  that  prewar  time.  Their  background 
is  not  the  same.  It  is  the  background  of  Armageddon. 
Their  horizon  of  vision  is  not  the  same.  They  look  out 
upon  a  changing  world.  In  ten  years  from  now  pre- 
war England  will  seem  as  remote  and  archaic  as  the 

380 


I 


THE  CHANCE  OF  YOUTH 

eighteenth  century.  It  seems  to  me  likely  that  the 
first-year  and  the  second-year  men  at  Oxford  now  will 
see  the  last  phase  of  that  University  history  when  caste 
and  wealth  maintained  their  pleasant  privilege  almost 
unchallenged.  Democracy,  with  its  rough  accent,  will 
break  in. 

Ill 

A  change,  visible,  unmistakable,  aggressive,  has  over- 
taken the  youth  of  democracy  itself.  The  boys  of  the 
laboring  classes  in  England,  and  of  what  we  still  call,  with 
our  fine  distinction  of  caste,  **the  lower  middle  class," 
have  developed  into  a  new  type,  and  are  reaching  out  to 
new  ideas  which,  beyond  any  doubt  at  all,  will  either  de- 
stroy England  or  transform  it.  These  lads  of  eighteen, 
nineteen,  or  so  were  more  intimately  touched  by  the  war 
than  those  of  their  same  age  in  higher  ranks  of  English 
life.  They  were  far  more  closely  involved  in  the  terrific 
churning  up  of  English  mass  psychology,  and  habits  of 
life  and  labor.  Born  and  bred  in  the  back  streets  of 
London  and  great  cities,  their  first  memories  of  childhood 
go  back  to  prewar  days  when  their  parents  lived  un- 
easily, hardly,  on  the  edge  of  dire  poverty.  Life  then 
was  a  humdrum  routine  of  work  on  small  wages  with  a 
little  margin  at  the  best  for  small  pleasures.  It  seemed 
unchanging  and  unchangeable,  as  inevitable  as  the  laws 
of  nature.  It  was  rather  squalid,  dreary,  and  uninspir- 
ing. There  was  not  much  adventure  in  it,  except  for 
rare  and  daring  souls,  such  as  Lipton,  Lever,  and  some 
others,  who  broke  away  and  climbed  high  beyond  the 
luck  of  those  in  the  ruck  of  ill-paid  toil.  Then  the  war 
came,  knocking  at  those  small  doors  in  mean  streets. 
The  first  knocks  were  a  summons  to  the  older  brothers 
or  the  younger  fathers — "Your  King  and  country  need 
you!"  Well,  that  was  rather  wonderful!  They  had 
never  been  needed  before  so  urgently  and  importantly 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

by  King  and  country.  They  answered  the  summons, 
exalted  out  of  the  old  ruck,  proud  and  glad,  eager  for 
an  adventure  which  made  life  less  squalid,  and  gave  it 
a  nobler  meaning.  The  little  houses  in  the  back  streets 
poured  forth  the  youngish  men,  who  went  away  to 
strange  places,  leaving  their  women  folk,  and  the  small 
boys  and  the  hobbledehoy  lads  too  young  to  serve. 
Then  came  other  knocks  at  the  doors.  It  was  death 
that  came  knocking.  The  youngish  father  or  the  elder 
brother  had  fallen  on  the  field  of  honor  or  was 
"wounded,  reported  missing."  As  the  years  passed, 
single  knocks  became  double  knocks  at  the  hearts  of 
women  as  well  as  at  the  doors  of  houses.  First  one 
lad,  then  another — in  some  houses  three  or  four — now 
gone  forever.  The  little  houses  in  the  mean  streets  of 
London  and  great  cities,  and  cottages  in  country  villages, 
provided  the  great  majority  of  casualties — these  long 
daily  lists  of  deaths,  in  "other  ranks."  Small  boys, 
growing  big,  saw  their  mothers  weeping,  heard  of  fathers' 
deaths,  and  wondered  and  thought  about  the  meaning 
of  it  all.  But  other  things  were  happening  in  their 
little  homes.  Things  not  so  miserable,  rather  wonder- 
ful. Boys  too  young  to  serve  as  soldiers  were  old 
enough  to  work  in  munition  factories  and  get  good 
wages.  Girls'  hands  were  wanted  as  well  as  male  hands. 
Wages  kept  rising.  Money  was  plentiful.  Never  had 
these  little  households  seen  so  much  good  money  flowing 
in  week  by  week. 

Separation  allowances  made  a  good  beginning.  Pen- 
sions for  badly  wounded  men  helped  to  comfort  their 
women.  With  two  or  three  girls  in  the  family,  a  growing 
boy  or  two,  an  older  lad  exempted  because  of  his  trade, 
or  the  father  too  old  to  be  taken,  the  week's  wages  in 
war  time  amounted  to  a  little  fortune.  Easy  come, 
easy  go.  No  stinting  of  food  for  working  families. 
Good  clothes  and  good  boots.    The  "pictures"  twice  a 

382 


THE  CHANCE  OF  YOUTH 

week,  a  gramophone  in  the  parlor.  After  all,  for  lucky 
households  where  death  did  not  come  knocking  at  the 
door  the  war  was  not  so  bad.  It  was  not  at  all  bad  for 
boys  of  jRfteen  and  sixteen  and  seventeen,  who  jingled 
money  in  their  pockets  Hke  young  lords,  stood  treat  to 
the  girls  whenever  they  Hked,  felt  gloriously  independent. 
They  remembered  the  early  days  before  the  war,  when 
there  had  been  stinting  and  scraping,  how  miserable 
and  squalid  they  were!  Well,  they  would  never  go  back 
to  that.     Labor  had  come  into  its  own. 

So  it  seemed,  until  the  war  ended  and  long  after  the 
war  ended,  until  gradually  unemployment  grew  apace, 
and  the  men  who  came  back  could  not  get  jobs,  or  would 
not  work,  or  struck  for  wages  which  presently  could 
not  be  granted  because  victory  had  cost  a  lot  of  money 
and  trade  disappeared. 

The  lads  of  nineteen,  twenty,  twenty-one  have  been 
through  the  gamut  of  that  experience,  have  seen  the 
pendulum  swing  visibly  this  way  and  that,  and  have 
listened  to  exciting  conversations  in  small  parlors  and 
back  kitchens,  where  these  rapid  changes  now  happened 
to  the  Hves  of  working  famiHes.  They  have  heard  the 
tales  of  returned  soldiers,  their  fathers  and  brothers 
who  escaped,  and  listened  to  their  curses  against  war, 
and  their  blasphemous  comments  on  peace  without  re- 
ward. The  shrill  talk  of  working  mothers,  inveighing 
against  injustice,  has  been  in  their  ears.  And  they 
have  done  a  deal  of  thinking  and  talking  at  street 
comers. 

Some  of  them  have  been  reading  a  bit,  and  learning 
to  debate  in  local  clubs,  and  getting  hold  of  books  and 
facts  to  help  them  in  debate.  The  youth  of  democracy 
is  not  indifferent  to  the  affairs  of  Ufe.  Not  indifferent, 
but  ignorant  of  any  larger  truth  than  they  find  in  venom- 
ous little  pamphlets  or  lying  little  paragraphs  of  revo- 
idtionary  rags  inciting  them  to  a  holy  war  against  the 

383 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

"idle  rich."  Their  knowledge  of  economics  is  limited 
to  the  rate  of  wages  compared  with  the  cost  of  life, 
and  they  have  no  notion  of  the  interdependence  of 
nations,  or  of  the  effect  of  dear  labor  and  limited  output 
upon  a  country  like  their  own  which  gained  its  commer- 
cial prosperity  by  cheap  labor  and  large  output.  They 
are  taught,  and  they  believe,  that  "capital"  has  such 
inexhaustible  resources  of  wealth  that  if  its  unjust 
profits  are  distributed  among  those  who  do  the  hardest 
toil  there  could  be  large  wages  and  short  hours  for  all 
of  them.  Not  yet  has  it  been  brought  home  to  them  that 
after  a  war  which  destroyed  the  savings  of  centuries  and 
mortgaged  the  industry  of  future  generations  the  only 
escape  from  ruin  is  by  way  of  longer  hours,  less  pay, 
and  increased  efficiency.  The  youth  of  democracy, 
inspired  by  a  one-eyed  propaganda,  fed  on  half  truths 
and  false  science,  see  the  progress  of  life  only  in  terms 
of  class  conflict,  view  it  all  as  a  union  of  classes  moving 
toward  a  common  goal.  Capital  is  the  "enemy"  of 
labor.  The  idea  that  it  might  be  the  ally  of  labor 
does  not  enter  into  their  imagination. 

After  all,  those  boys  of  the  back  streets  see  the  facts 
of  Hfe  shrewdly,  as  far  as  they  can  be  visualized  in  their 
own  experience,  and  cannot  be  expected  to  have  a  wider 
vision,  without  any  kind  of  guidance.  They  see  the  little 
cheats  and  corruptions  and  robberies  of  the  retail  trades- 
man whom  they  serve  as  shopboys  and  counterjumpers. 
They  see  the  ruthless  grind  of  small  employers  of  labor 
who  became  war  profiteers  by  exploiting  the  needs  of 
the  people  with  unashamed  dishonesty.  They  saw 
those  profiteers  in  the  making,  were  witnesses  of  their 
tricks  and  dodges,  watched  their  progress  to  prosperity 
while  young  men  died  in  dirty  ditches  for  ideals  loudly 
proclaimed  by  these  old  bandits  who  wanted  the  war  to 
go  on  forever  and  were  callous  of  its  massacres.  No 
wonder  the  boys  of  the  back  streets  are  cynical  and 

384 


THE  CHANCE  OF  YOUTH 

selfish  in  their  own  aims.  The  capitalists  and  the  govern- 
ment do  not  act  in  a  way  to  disarm  their  hostility.  With 
but  a  thin  camouflage  of  justice,  capital  and  its  po- 
litical defenders  play  their  own  game,  protect  their  own 
interests,  and  "dig  in"  for  a  trench  warfare  against  the 
claims  of  democracy  for  a  greater  share  of  reward,  a 
greater  knowledge  of  secret  diplomacy,  a  closer  co-opera- 
tion in  the  management  of  the  business  in  which  they 
happen  to  be  working.  During  the  war  labor  was  petted 
and  pampered,  promised  an  immense  harvest  of  the 
fruits  of  victory,  a  land  fit  for  heroes  to  live  in,  and 
security  of  Hfe  and  limb.  Those  promises  were  flung 
away  with  cynical  contempt  when  the  war  ended.  The 
governments  of  Europe  arranged  a  peace  which  was  to 
be  a  preparation  for  new  wars.  They  ignored  the 
economics  of  life  for  political  adventures  paid  for  out  of 
the  poverty  of  exhausted  peoples.  Reckless  of  the  finan- 
cial ruin  of  their  countries  after  the  exhaustion  of  war, 
they  increased  the  burdens  of  taxation  by  a  wild  levity 
of  extravagance,  as  though  stricken  mad  by  victory, 
I'ntil,  brought  abruptly  to  a  check  by  panic,  they  tried 
to  save  themselves  by  a  sudden  onslaught  upon  working- 
men's  wages.  There  was  no  attempt,  in  England,  any- 
how, to  arrange  a  gradual  reduction  of  wages  according 
to  a  gradual  descent  in  costs  of  living,  no  kind  of  attempt 
to  organize  a  new  fellowship  between  capital  and  labor, 
by  means  of  which  the  interests  of  both  would  be  served, 
greater  efficiency  might  be  secured,  and  the  prosperity 
of  the  nation  saved  from  the  menace  of  complete  de- 
struction. Just  as  labor  declared  war  on  capital,  so 
capital  declared  war  on  labor  (after  licking  its  boots  in 
time  of  need),  and  neither  side  had  any  vision  beyond 
the  narrow  conflict.  Youth  failed  to  come  forward  with 
a  new  call  to  its  battalions.  Youth  played  into  the  hands 
of  corrupt  old  politicians,  or  else  did  not  bother.  At  the 
time  of  writing  this  book,  youth  is  still  lagging  behind, 

385 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

afraid  to  take  its  place,  or  not  wanting  its  place.    Yet 
the  chance  of  youth  is  the  hope  of  the  world. 


What  is  that  chance?  .  .  .  That  is  hard  to  define.  It 
would  be  great  audacity  to  outline  a  program  for  the 
youth  of  the  world,  and  any  such  attempt  would  be, 
rightly,  ridiculed  by  the  younger  generation.  They 
will  not  be  bound  by  hard  and  fast  rules  laid  down  for 
their  guidance  by  the  old  men  whom  they  despise. 
They  are  not  to  be  tied  to  labels  or  enrolled  into  new 
parties  of  high-sounding  names.  They  will  not  make 
an  act  of  faith  in  any  ready-made  creed  of  political 
philosophy,  or  be  governed  by  laws  laid  down  by 
ancient  precedent.  The  youth  of  the  coming  world 
will,  like  its  predecessors,  indulge  in  a  free  play  of 
ideas  and  individual  liberty  of  opinion,  ranging  itself 
instinctively,  by  hereditary  influences,  or  conditions  of 
character,  temper,  prejudice,  and  passion,  with  con- 
flicting groups.  There  will  be  the  eternal  fight  between 
those  who  see  differing  aspects  of  truth  and  think  their 
view  is  the  full  and  perfect  vision,  between  the  activists 
and  the  passivists,  the  vitalists  and  the  mechanists,  the 
egotists  and  the  altruists.  The  House  of  Youth  will 
have  its  Guelphs  and  its  Ghibellines,  its  Negri  and 
Bianchi,  as  throughout  the  history  of  the  world.  And 
that  is  good,  for  it  would  be  a  bad  world  if  the  ardor 
of  youth,  its  gay  sense  of  adventure,  its  valors,  should 
be  marshaled  into  one  disciplined  force,  obeying  some 
single  idea  imposed  by  the  tyranny  of  a  theoretical 
monster,  or  by  some  new  fanaticism.  Yet  with  perfect 
liberty  and  a  myriad  diflPerences  of  ideas  and  methods, 
there  may  surely  be  a  new  jumping-off  ground  for  the 
race  of  youth  to  new  goals.  There  may  be  general 
consent  about  certain  undoubted  facts  of  life,  as  there 

386 


THE  CHANCE  OF  YOUTH 

is  about  the  sun  shining  in  the  heavens,  in  spite  of 
Relativity,  and  about  the  need  of  food  to  human  life, 
though  doctors  may  differ  about  the  number  of  calories 
required  for  human  sustenance. 

The  new  jumping-ofF  ground  might  well  be  a  line 
cutting  across  history  on  November  li,  191 8,  and 
dividing  the  Old  World  from  the  New,  as  Before  the  War 
and  After  the  War.  Youth  might  at  least  say:  "What 
happened  Before  the  War  was  all  wrong.  It  is  for  us  to 
see  that  its  immense  stupidity  of  wrongness  shall  not 
happen  again."  From  that  starting  point  they  could 
go  ahead,  casting  away  all  the  old  baggage  of  racial  and 
historical  hatreds,  diplomatic  intrigues  and  sacrifices, 
military  traditions  and  superstitions.  If  youth  cannot 
yet  formulate  a  positive  faith,  they  can  at  least  assert  a 
negative  faith  annihilating  the  folly  of  the  past. 

*'I  do  not  believe  in  war  as  a  reasonable  way  of 
argument. 

"I  do  not  believe  that  preparation  for  war  is  a  pre- 
ventive of  war. 

*'I  do  not  believe  that  armed  conflict  is  necessary  to 
the  spiritual  vigor  of  mankind. 

"I  do  not  believe  that  the  victory  of  one  nation  over 
another  increases  the  wealth  of  the  victor  nation. 

*'I  do  not  believe  that  national  egotism  is  the  supreme 
virtue  of  the  individual  and  the  state. 

*'I  do  not  believe  that  there  must  be  an  eternal  con- 
flict between  those  who  do  the  rough  work  of  the  world 
and  those  who  organize  the  produce  of  their  labor. 

"I  do  not  beheve  that  civilization  reached  its  highest 
phase  in  1914. 

"I  do  not  beheve  that  cruelty  is  an  essential  element 
of  human  nature,  that  selfishness  is  the  highest  and 
strongest  motive  of  individuals  and  nations,  and  that 
the  pursuit  of  spiritual  truth  and  beauty  are  mere 
illusions  of  disordered  minds. 

387 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

"I  do  not  believe  that  the  poHtical  and  economic 
system  of  Europe  as  laid  down  in  the  Treaty  of  Ver- 
sailles was  divinely  inspired  by  Heaven-sent  messengers 
named  Wilson,  Lloyd  George,  and  Clemenceau,  and 
therefore  unalterable  by  human  effort  without  grievous 
sin. 

"I  do  not  believe  that  men  and  women  are  incapable 
of  simple  reasoning,  and  of  actions  which  may  preserve 
them  from  otherwise  certain  famine,  disease,  slaughter, 
and  extermination."  ^ 

It  is  not  too  much  to  ask  youth  to  accept  these  nega- 
tions, after  a  little  argument  and  a  call  for  evidence. 
Indeed,  my  own  belief  is  that  the  younger  generation 
is  satisfied  with  the  evidence,  and  has  already  cleared 
all  that  useless  lumber  out  of  its  mind.  As  far  as  I  know 
some  of  these  younger  men,  they  do  not  believe  that  war 
is  a  reasonable  way  of  argument.  They  see  no  sense  in 
it  at  all,  though  they  may  see  a  nonsensical  adventure 
which  provides  an  escape  from  boredom,  or  an  unpleasant 
way  of  life.  I  fancy  they  would  grant  without  further 
debate  (except  for  the  amusement  of  debate)  the  other 
negatives  I  have  set  out,  and  if  they  would  only  get 
positive  about  a  new  system  of  Hfe  and  thought  starting 
cleanly  from  the  sponging  out  of  old  traditions,  the 
world  would  move  apace  beyond  its  present  state  of 
misery.  "Perhaps  to  new  and  unknown  miseries!" 
cries  the  pessimist.  Alas,  yes!  But  I  think  of  the 
latest  definition  I  heard  of  a  pessimist — a  man  who 
wears  two  pairs  of  braces  and  a  belt.  One  can't  move  a 
step  without  a  risk. 

It  is  even  possible  to  set  up  the  goal  posts  for  the  new 
race  of  youth,  and  hope  that  they  will  start  in  that 
direction  without  a  backward  glance,  and  with  good 
wind  and  heart.  The  world  knows  its  own  quagmires, 
its  own  danger  spots,  the  place  of  the  precipice  over 
which  we  all  must  plunge  if  we  go  much  farther  in  that 

388 


THE  CHANCE  OF  YOUTH 

direction.  Battlefields  are  not  the  only  danger  spots — 
and  perhaps  I  am  inclined  to  harp  too  much  on  the  peril 
of  a  new  war,  not  saying  so  much  about  the  peril  of 
world  famine,  of  disease,  of  moral  and  spiritual  de- 
cadence. But  it  is  certain  to  all  thinking  minds  that  a 
new  war  on  the  scale  of  the  last  (and  a  new  war  would 
be  worse  than  the  last)  would  lead  to  all  those  other 
plagues,  and  end  all  our  hopes.  The  danger  of  it  is  so 
great  and  evident  that  at  least  any  new  goal  set  up  by 
youth  must  first  of  all  avoid  that  old  pitfall.  Why  not.'' 
What  is  the  difficulty?  I  see  none,  if  youth  will  say  with 
conviction,  "I  do  not  beheve  in  war  as  a  reasonable  way 
of  argument";  still  less,  if  there  may  be  less  than  none 
(which  is  possible),  if  youth  will  say  with  positive  and 
triumphant  assertion,  "I  do  believe  in  peace!" 

Given  that  assertion,  there  is  a  program  ready  for 
youth,  not  too  formal  or  cut  and  dried,  but  nobly  out- 
lined, as  a  fine  clear  vision  across  a  fair  field  unexplored 
by  pioneers. 


There  is  one  man  in  Europe  to-day — not  belonging  to 
the  battalion  of  youth,  yet  never  one  of  the  old  men, 
though  he  stood  among  them,  aghast  at  their  stupidity, 
indignant  with  their  wickedness — who  has  marked  out 
the  goal  for  the  younger  generation  of  the  English- 
speaking  world,  in  the  field  of  foreign  policy.  That  is 
General  Smuts,  who  looks  forward  with  courage,  and 
not  in  a  cowardly  way,  backward.  I  think  his  speech 
before  the  imperial  conference  in  June  of  1921,  reported 
in  scraps  and  mostly  ignored  in  the  gutter  press,  gave 
a  clear  call  to  youth  for  their  work  in  the  building  of  a 
new  world — to  the  youth  of  the  English-speaking 
peoples  in  the  great  family  of  the  British  Empire.  His 
first  words  were  but  a  repetition  of  one  word  ringing  like 

389 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

a  bell  In  the  ears  of  those  who  listened,  and  it  rang  again 
and  again  throughout  his  speech: 

''What  the  world  most  needs  to-day,"  he  said,  "is 
peace,  a  return  to  a  peaceful  temper,  and  to  the  resump- 
tion of  peaceful  and  normal  industry.  To  my  mind  that 
is  the  test  of  all  true  policy  to-day.  Peace  is  wanted  by 
the  world.  Peace  is  wanted  especially  by  the  peoples 
of  the  British  Empire.  We  are  a  peaceful  empire;  our 
very  nature  is  such  that  peace  is  necessary  for  us.  We 
have  no  military  aims  to  serve,  we  have  no  militarist 
ideals,  and  it  is  only  in  a  peaceful  world  that  our  ideals 
can  be  realized. 

"It  should  therefore  be  the  main — in  fact  the  only — 
object  of  the  British  policy,"  said  General  Smuts,  "to 
secure  real  peace  for  the  empire  and  the  world  generally. 
The  question  of  reparations,  which  was,  perhaps,  the 
most  difficult  and  intricate  with  which  we  had  to  deal 
in  Paris,  has  finally  been  ehminated,  in  a  settlement 
which,  I  venture  to  hope,  will  prove  final  and  workable. 
That  is  a  very  great  advance.  The  other  great  advance 
that  has  been  made — and  it  is  an  enormous  advance — 
is  the  final  disarmament  of  Germany.  That  the  greatest 
miHtary  empire  that  ever  existed  in  history  should  be 
reduced  to  a  peace  estabUshment  of  100,000  men  is 
something  which  I  considered  practically  impossible. 
It  is  a  great  achievement,  so- far  reaching,  indeed,  that 
it  ought  to  become  the  basis  of  a  new  departure  in  world 
policy." 

He  pointed  out  that  "we  cannot  stop  with  Germany, 
we  cannot  stop  with  the  disarmament  of  Germany.  It 
is  impossible  for  us  to  continue  to  envisage  the  future 
of  the  world  from  the  point  of  view  of  war.  .  .  .  Such  a 
policy  would  be  criminal,  it  would  be  the  betrayal  of  the 
causes  for  which  we  fought  during  the  war,  and  if  we 
embarked  on  such  a  policy  it  would  be  our  undoing. 
If  we  are  to  go  forward  into  the  future  staggering  under 

390 


THE  CHANCE  OF  YOUTH 

the  load  of  military  and  naval  armaments,  while  our 
competitors  in  central  Europe  are  free  from  the  incubus 
of  great  armies,  we  shall  be  severely  handicapped  and 
in  the  end  we  shall  have  the  fruits  of  victory  lost  to  us 
by  our  postwar  policy.  Already  under  the  operation  of 
inexorable  economic  factors  we  find  that  the  position  is 
developing  to  the  advantage  of  central  Europe. 

"Armaments  depend  upon  policy,  and  therefore," 
said  Smuts,  "I  press  very  strongly  that  our  policy  should 
be  such  as  to  make  the  race  for  armaments  impossible. 
That  should  be  the  cardinal  feature  of  our  foreign 
policy.  We  should  not  go  into  the  future  under  this 
awful  handicap  of  having  to  support  great  armaments, 
build  new  fleets,  raise  new  armies,  while  our  economic 
competitors  are  free  of  that  hability  under  the  peace 
treaty. 

"The  most  fatal  mistake  of  all  in  my  humble  opinion 
would  be  a  race  of  armaments  against  America.  America 
is  the  nation  that  is  closest  to  us  in  all  the  human  ties. 
The  Dominions  look  upon  her  as  the  oldest  of  them. 
She  is  the  relation  with  whom  we  most  closely  agree 
and  with  whom  we  can  most  cordially  work  together. 
She  left  our  circle  a  long  time  ago  because  of  a  great 
historic  mistake.  I  am  not  sure  that  a  wise  policy  after 
the  great  events  through  which  we  have  recently  passed 
might  not  repair  the  effects  of  that  great  historic  error 
and  once  more  bring  America  on  to  lines  of  general 
co-operation  with  the  British  Empire. 

"To  my  mind  it  seems  clear  that  the  only  path  of 
safety  for  the  British  Empire  is  a  path  on  which  she  can 
walk  together  with  America.  In  saying  this  I  do  not 
wish  to  be  understood  as  advocating  an  American 
alliance.  Nothing  of  the  kind.  I  do  not  advocate  an 
alliance  or  any  exclusive  arrangement  with  America. 
It  would  be  undesirable,  it  would  be  impossible  and  un- 
necessary.   The  British  Empire  is  not  in  need  of  exclu- 

391 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

sive  allies.  It  emerged  from  the  war  quite  the  greatest 
power  in  the  world,  and  it  is  only  unwisdom  or  unsound 
policy  that  could  rob  her  of  that  great  position.  She 
does  not  want  exclusive  alliances.  What  she  wants  to 
see  established  is  more  universal  friendship  in  the 
world.  The  nations  of  the  British  Empire  work  to 
make  all  the  nations  of  the  world  more  friendly  to  one 
another.  We  wish  to  remove  grounds  for  misunder- 
standings and  causes  of  friction,  and  to  bring  together 
all  the  free  peoples  of  the  world  in  a  system  of  friendly 
conferences  and  consultations  in  regard  to  their  difficul- 
ties. We  wish  to  see  a  real  society  of  nations,  away 
from  the  old  ideas  and  practices  of  national  domination 
or  imperial  domination,  which  were  the  real  root  causes 
of  the  Great  War.  Although  America  is  not  a  member 
of  the  League  of  Nations,  there  is  no  doubt  that  co- 
operation between  her  and  the  British  Empire  would  be 
the  easy  and  natural  thing,  and  there  is  no  doubt  it 
would  be  the  wise  thing. 

*'In  shaping  our  course  for  the  future,  we  must  bear 
in  mind  that  the  whole  world  position  has  radic?lly 
altered  as  a  result  of  the  war.  The  old  viewpoint  from 
which  we  considered  Europe  has  completely  altered. 
She  suffers  from  an  exhaustion  which  is  the  most  ap- 
palling fact  of  history;  and  the  victorious  countries  of 
Europe  are  not  much  better  off  than  the  vanquished. 
No,  the  scene  has  shifted  on  the  great  stage.  To  my 
mind  that  is  the  most  important  fact  in  the  world  to- 
day, and  the  fact  to  which  our  foreign  policy  should 
have  special  regard.  Our  temptation  is  still  to  look  upon 
the  European  stage  as  of  the  first  importance.  It  is  no 
longer  so;  and  I  suggest  that  we  should  not  be  too 
deeply  preoccupied  with  it.  .  .  .  Therefore,  not  from 
feelings  of  selfishness,  but  in  a  spirit  of  wisdom,  one 
would  counsel  prudence  and  reserve  in  our  continental 
commitments;    that  we    do   not    let   ourselves   in   for 

392 


THE  CHANCE  OF  YOUTH 

European  entanglements  more  than  is  necessary,  and 
that  we  be  impartial,  friendly,  and  helpful  to  all  alike, 
and  avoid  any  partisan  attitude  in  the  concerns  of  the 
Continent  of  Europe. 

"Undoubtedly  the  scene  has  shifted  away  from  Eu- 
rope to  the  Far  East  and  to  the  Pacific.  The  problems 
of  the  Pacific  are  to  my  mind  the  world  problems  of 
the  next  fifty  years  or  more.  In  these  problems  we  are, 
as  an  empire,  very  vitally  interested.  Three  of  the  Do- 
minions border  on  the  Pacific;  India  is  next  door;  there, 
too,  are  the  United  States  and  Japan.  There  also  is 
China;  the  fate  of  the  greatest  human  population  on 
earth  will  have  to  be  decided.  There  Europe,  Asia,  and 
America  are  meeting,  and  there,  I  beHeve,  the  next 
great  chapter  in  human  history  will  be  enacted.  I  ask 
myself  what  will  be  the  character  of  that  history. 

"Shall  we  act  in  continuous  friendly  consultation  in 
the  true  spirit  of  a  society  of  nations,  or  will  there  once 
more  be  a  repetition  of  rival  groups,  of  exclusive  alli- 
ances, and  finally  of  a  terrible  catastrophe  more  fatal 
than  the  one  we  have  passed  through?  That,  to  my 
mind,  is  the  alternative.  That  is  the  parting  of  the 
ways  at  which  we  have  arrived  now." 

With  a  plea  that  the  British  Empire  should  act  as 
mediator  between  the  East  and  West,  General  Smuts 
turned  to  the  Prime  Minister,  Lloyd  George,  with  the 
reminder  of  something  that  that  man  had  helped  to 
create  and  afterward  had  tried  to  kill,  by  contempt  and 
neglect.  It  was  the  reminder  that  the  world  had  at  hand 
an  instrument  of  comparison,  consultation,  and  inter- 
national justice  which  might  be  used  to  Hft  the  world 
out  of  its  morass.  That  instrument  was  the  League  of 
Nations,  which  even  yet  could  be  made  good  in  fulfill- 
ment of  the  hopes  for  which  it  had  been  shaped. 

There  is  a  policy  which  youth  might  adopt,  within  the 
English-speaking  world.  It  is  a  free  policy,  not  fixed  to 
26  393 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

narrow  lines,  not  tied  up  to  tradition,  not  defined  as  an 
austere  dogma,  but  points  the  goal  that  may  be  reached 
by  many  ways  and  methods  if  the  spirit  of  the  army 
leaders  is  directed  toward  the  ideal  of  world  peace,  not 
only  with  white  races,  but  with  black,  and  brown,  and 
yellow  races. 


VI 

Youth  should  find  this  a  great  adventure.  Its  soul 
will  not  be  cramped  for  lack  of  opportunity,  and  looking 
near  at  hand  in  that  Europe  from  which,  as  General 
Smuts  thinks,  the  balance  of  power  is  shifting,  there  is 
other  work  to  do,  not  without  ability  and  adventurous 
intelligence.  The  nations  of  Europe  have  still  to  re- 
shape their  internal  life,  to  revitalize  their  own  energies, 
to  start  afresh  in  a  new  era  of  hope  and  social  effort. 
We  are  tired,  now,  in  Europe.  Our  countries  are  filled 
with  people  who  became  old  in  the  four  years  of  war, 
and  stayed  weary  with  continuing  lassitude.  We  are 
unable  to  rouse  ourselves  to  new  efforts,  to  begin  the 
world  again.  But  in  a  little  while  we  old,  tired  people 
will  go  to  rest,  and  youth,  with  its  freshness,  not  de- 
jected by  that  aging  experience,  that  inward  weariness 
of  soul  caused  by  the  tension  of  a  long-drawn  agony, 
will  be  ready  for  new  beginnings.  They  will  do  well  if 
they  make  a  clean  sweep  of  old  watchwords  and  old 
labels.  They  will  start  well  if  they  sweep  away  at  once 
the  labels  of  the  old  quack  remedies  of  political  cheap- 
jacks — Tory,  Liberal,  Communist,  Socialist,  Bolshevist. 
If  they  must  have  labels  and  quack  remedies,  let  them 
be  new  and  freshly  mixed,  for  the  others  have  grown 
musty  and  soured.  I  think  the  spirit  of  youth  should 
get  to  work  first  to  reconstruct  national  life  by  a  new 
philosophy  of  social  duty.  That  sounds  rather  hard  and 
dogmatic,  but  it  seems  to  me  that  no   reconstruction 

394 


THE  CHANCE  OF  YOUTH 

may  be  well  done  unless  it  is  based  upon  certain  laws  of 
which  we  can  have  new  knowledge. 

It  is  certain,  for  instance,  and  very  clear  to  all  minds 
after  three  years  of  muddled  peace,  that  there  can  be  no 
recovery  of  Europe  so  long  as  nations  do  not  recognize 
their  economic  interplay,  or  so  long  as  there  is  this 
wild  confusion  of  interests,  this  madness  of  hostility 
between  sections  of  society,  within  the  nations  them- 
selves. Experiments  have  been  made  of  many  old  ideas 
which  seemed  to  hold  some  virtue  in  them  until  their 
failure  and  falsity  were  proved  to  all  the  world. 

Communism  had  its  chance  in  Russia,  and  its  destruc- 
tion of  capital  and  private  property  and  individual 
liberty,  and  all  the  delicate  machinery  of  modern  life, 
in  a  desperate  effort  for  absolute  equality,  has  given  to 
the  world  a  ghastly  exhibition  of  famine,  typhus,  and 
tyranny.  It  has  proved  itself  wrong  in  psychology  as 
well  as  in  economic  science.  Lenin  was  defeated  by 
the  instincts  of  human  nature  more  than  by  the  break- 
down of  transport  and  supplies. 

There  have  been  other  experiments  which  now  belong 
to  the  long  catalogue  of  human  folly.  The  German  ex- 
periment of  a  world  dominance  by  military  power  came 
to  a  very  ruinous  result,  and  this,  too,  was  defeated,  not 
so  much  by  counter-forces  of  the  same  kind  as  by  cer- 
tain spiritual  powers  working  in  the  minds  of  humble 
men  and  rallying  them  to  passionate  resistance.  There 
has  been  the  general  breakdown  of  a  materialistic 
philosophy  which  had  Europe,  and  the  whole  world, 
indeed,  within  its  grips.  The  very  objects  which  the 
human  family  was  striving  to  attain  have  been  proved 
false. 

Happiness  is,  after  all,  the  main  purpose  of  human 
life,  but  there  was  no  great  sum  of  human  happiness 
visible  in  the  world  before  the  war,  even  among  those 
people  who  seemed  to  have  gained  all  that  others  were 

395 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

striving  and  failing  to  gain.  Material  comfort,  the 
relaxations  of  life,  the  power  of  wealth,  the  pleasures  of 
the  world,  seemed  to  promise  satisfaction  to  their  pos- 
sessors and  to  be  the  unattainable  good  to  people  in  the 
squalor  and  peril  of  poverty.  All  civilized  society  was 
engaged  in  a  desperate  struggle  to  reach  or  hold  those 
material  values,  and  it  was  a  cutthroat  conflict  between 
possessors  and  dispossessed.  Yet  the  successful  man  did 
not  seem  to  bask  in  his  success.  He  seemed  balked  by 
some  psychological  bunker.  He  had  no  restfulness  of 
soul,  but  strove  always  for  more  wealth  and  more  power. 
The  pleasures  of  life  did  not  seem  wonderfully  pleasing 
to  those  who  wallowed  in  them.  Indeed,  one  cynic  said 
that  Hfe  would  be  endurable  but  for  its  pleasures.  Eng- 
lish society  before  the  war  had  secured  all  there  was  in 
the  way  of  material  happiness,  yet  to  an  outside  observer 
like  myself  there  was  not  much  evidence  that  those 
people  were  really  happy,  or  even  honestly  amused. 
They  were  weary  with  the  pleasures  of  the  London  sea- 
son, they  were  bored  at  Ascot  and  bored  again  at  Cowes. 
In  their  country  houses  they  quarreled  with  their  wives 
more  savagely  than  less  lucky  men  in  country  cottages. 
They  had  a  sense  of  emptiness  which  they  tried  to  fill 
by  artificial  means,  Hke  gambling  or  playing  dangerous 
games  with  other  men's  women  or  w4th  other  women's 
men.  If,  then,  the  possession  of  all  that  society  desires 
in  material  prosperity  brings  no  satisfaction,  it  seems 
clearly  demonstrated  that  society  is  pursuing  an  illu- 
sion in  the  search  for  happiness.  The  very  goal  of  their 
desire  is  a  mirage  leading  them  on  through  desperate 
ways  to  a  waterless  desert.  There  must  be  some  other 
conception  of  human  happiness.  Mere  materiaUsm  is  not 
good  enough.  Manchester,  Wigan,  Pittsburgh,  and 
Chicago,  Essen  and  Elberfeld,  even  London,  Paris,  New 
York,  and  Berlin,  do  not  demonstrate  in  their  richer 
quarters  a  high  standard  of  human  happiness,  though 

396 


THE  CHANCE  OF  YOUTH 

in  their  poorer  quarters  and  in  other  parts  or  their 
civilized  jungles  there  is  a  frightful  conflict  for  some 
share  of  it. 

Here  is  a  problem  for  the  coming  youth  to  solve,  and 
surely  the  solution  is  that  material  and  spiritual  progress 
must  be  intertwined,  that  poverty  of  spirit  is  as  bad  as 
poverty  in  material  things,  or  worse,  and  that  the  ideal 
of  human  happiness  is  not  to  be  found  in  mere  posses- 
sion, but  perhaps  in  the  honor  of  service,  in  work  which 
has  a  spiritual  purpose  as  well  as  material  reward,  in 
security  rather  than  in  wealth,  in  energy  rather  than  in 
idleness,  in  welfare  of  mind  as  well  as  of  body,  and  in  the 
pursuit  of  an  ideal  not  wholly  selfish. 

It  is  perhaps  possible  that  youth  may  reconstruct 
society  on  a  more  spiritual  basis  which  would  tend  to 
abolish  the  jungle  conflict  between  classes  and  in- 
dividuals by  the  modification  of  human  greed,  and  by  a 
union  of  interests  instead  of  open  warfare,  within  the 
nation.  In  home  aff'airs  as  well  as  in  international 
politics,  warfare  has  been  proved  a  senseless  form  of 
argument,  and  very  wasteful. 

Force  has  failed  definitely,  for  just  as  in  wars  between 
modern  nations  victory  hurts  as  much  as  defeat,  because 
energy  given  to  destruction  has  no  productive  value,  so 
in  industrial  warfare  successful  strikes  or  successful 
strike  breaking  means  unsuccessful  trade  to  both  sides. 
All  these  sectional  conflicts  lessen  the  wealth  of  a  people, 
whichever  way  they  go,  and  at  a  time  now,  when,  after 
the  exhaustion  of  war,  there  is  no  energy  at  all  for 
waste. 

It  is  clear  that  if  labor  in  England  demands  and  gains 
wages  at  war  rates,  or  double  war  rates,  such  victory 
will  be  without  value  to  them  in  our  present  conditions 
of  trade.  For  with  exports  down  by  50  per  cent,  and  cost 
of  production  higher  than  the  means  of  home  or  foreign 
markets,  and  taxation  reducing  the  purchasing  power  of 

397 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

all  consumers,  these  high  wages  will  not  balance  with 
high  prices,  nor  create  prosperity  by  which  they  may 
be  justified.  They  will  result  only  in  the  increase  of 
poverty  and  unemployment,  and  the  wages  themselves 
will  have  no  more  than  a  fictitious  value,  as  in  Germany, 
where  the  workingman  is  now  paid  sixty  marks  a  day 
instead  of  five  marks  as  in  prewar  days.  The  German 
workman  has  therefore  multipHed  his  wages  by  twelve 
times,  but  he  is  not  so  simple  as  to  think  that  he  has 
gained  a  stupendous  victory  in  material  progress.  On 
the  contrary,  he  knows  that  his  sixty  marks  are  worth 
less  to  him  in  real  value  than  the  five  marks  of  a  happier 
time. 

On  the  other  hand,  employers  of  labor  in  Great  Britain 
will  gain  no  victory  by  smashing  the  trade  unions  and 
beating  labor  to  its  knees.  That  process  will  be  costly, 
dangerous,  and  disastrous.  They  will  lose  more  by  such 
a  conflict  than  by  an  orderly,  just,  and  reasonable  ar- 
rangement based  upon  the  consent  of  free  and  spirited 
men.  They  lost  millions  of  pounds  more  in  the  great 
coal  conflict  of  this  year,  1921,  by  a  ruthless  ultimatum 
cutting  the  wages  of  the  miners  by  nearly  50  per  cent 
than  if  they  had  made  an  easy  sliding  scale  spread  over 
a  long  period  and  adjusted  to  falling  prices.  The  govern- 
ment, supporting  their  poUcy  of  ruthlessness,  expended 
vast  sums  of  public  money  in  raising  a  Defense  Force  to 
protect  the  nation  in  case  of  riots  (which  did  not  happen) 
and  to  pay  the  pensions  of  two  million  men  outside  the 
mining  districts  unemployed  because  factories  were  shut 
down  for  lack  of  fuel.  It  is  impossible  to  estimate  the 
loss  to  Great  Britain  due  to  that  insane  method  of  con- 
ducting national  industry,  for  apart  from  the  direct 
costs  and  losses  amounting  to  at  least  two  million  pounds 
a  day  during  the  whole  period  of  the  struggle,  covering 
the  third  part  of  a  working  year,  the  indirect  loss  of 
trade  which  will  not  be  recovered  for  many  years,  if 

398 


THE  CHANCE  OF  YOUTH 

ever  at  all,  is  incalculable.  One  expert  reckons  it  as 
two  hundred  and  forty  million  pounds. 

Yet  that  injury  to  the  nation  was  caused  not  by 
inevitable  forces  coming  into  conflict,  nor  by  any  prin- 
ciple of  justice  against  injustice,  which  must  be  fought 
out  lest  the  soul  should  perish,  but  by  sheer  stupidity 
on  both  sides.  The  owners  with  their  funny  little  bureau- 
cratic brains,  their  greedy  insincerities,  their  pose  of 
being  "strong  men,"  whereas  they  are  weak  men  of 
feeble  vision  and  petulant  character,  flung  a  wage 
schedule  at  the  colliers'  heads  with  a  "Take  it  or  leave 
it,"  knowing,  as  they  afterward  admitted,  that  the 
proposed  wages  were  below  the  minimum  standard  of 
life  compared  with  the  existing  costs  of  life's  necessities. 
On  the  other  side,  colliers  failed  to  understand  the 
realities  of  national  and  international  arithmetic  and 
believed  that  the  government  should  continue  to  sub- 
sidize unprofitable  mines.  No  man  among  them  all,  on 
both  sides  of  the  struggle,  had  any  broader  vision  than 
that  of  hostility — cat-and-dog  politics — nor  saw  what 
Vv^as  clear  to  all  outsiders,  that  by  friendly  understanding 
of  facts  and  figures,  a  union  of  common  interests  for  the 
good  of  the  industry,  an  increased  efl&ciency  of  organiza- 
tion and  output,  a  rigid  economy  of  management  and 
cost,  a  combined  effort  for  renewed  prosperity  by  a  tem- 
porary abatement  of  profits  all  round,  and  an  intensifi- 
cation of  energy,  above  all,  perhaps,  by  the  elimination 
of  corrupt  and  greedy  middlemen  so  that  the  price  of 
coal  at  the  pit-head  should  not  be  monstrously  increased 
when  it  arrived  at  the  coal  cellar,  the  greater  part  of  the 
trouble  might  be  overcome  to  the  benefit  of  everybody. 

That  case  is  typical  of  all  industrial  "unrest"  in  Great 
Britain.  All  sections  of  society  are  thinking  in  terms 
of  conflict  and  not  in  terms  of  combination.  They  are 
adopting  the  tactics  of  warfare  instead  of  the  policy  of 
conciliation.    The  principles  of  the  League  of  Nations, 

399 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

so  enthusiastically  applauded  by  *'labor"  as  the  hope 
of  the  world,  for  the  sake  of  world  peace  and  inter- 
national justice,  are  utterly  ignored  in  home  affairs. 


VII 

It  is  surely  *'up  to  youth,"  the  intelligence  of  the 
coming  generation,  to  abandon  these  absurdities  of  the 
old  tradition,  and  to  estabhsh  a  new  system  by  breaking 
down  the  old  frontiers  of  hostility  between  classes  as 
well  as  nations.  The  curse  of  English  hfe,  which  is 
snobbishness — snobbishness  of  the  masses  as  well  as 
snobbishness  of  the  classes — must  go  first  of  all,  for  there 
will  be  no  hope  so  long  as  the  workingman  has  a  silly 
pride  in  his  own  exclusive  caste  which  forbids  him  to 
associate  on  equal  terms  with  a  man  working  just  as 
hard  in  a  black  coat  instead  of  corduroys,  and  as  long 
as  the  black-coated  fellow  resents  comradeship  with 
those  who  wear  clothes  of  a  different  cut  and  spend  their 
days  without  a  collar.  It  must  be  recognized  in  the 
New  World  that  manual  labor  is  not  less  "genteel" 
than  intellectual  labor,  provided  the  laborer  plays  the 
game,  does  his  job  well,  and  looks  at  life  without  a 
squint.  It  must  also  be  acknowledged  by  the  "prole- 
tariat" (one  of  those  words  to  be  condemned  by  the 
makers  of  the  New  Dictionary)  that  the  brain  worker, 
the  artist,  the  writer  of  books,  is  also  entitled  to  his 
wages,  according  to  the  value  of  his  output,  and  is  not 
necessarily  a  "parasite,"  gorging  himself  on  the  blood  of 
the  toiling  masses,  but,  on  the  contrary,  in  many  cases, 
a  harder-working  person,  a  more  indefatigable  and 
enthusiastic  craftsman,  than  the  bricklayer  or  the  car- 
penter, and,  now  and  then,  a  greater  benefactor  of 
human  society. 

The  snobbishness  of  labor,  its  self-conceit,  its  unrea- 

400 


THE  CHANCE  OF  YOUTH 

sonable  hatred  of  the  intellectuals,  must  be  severely- 
checked. 

Here,  then,  is  another  task  for  youth — a  great  icon- 
oclasm,  a  joyous  destruction  of  all  those  Aunt  Sallies 
smirking  in  Vanity  Fair,  and  a  smashing  of  all  fetishes 
which  belong  to  the  tribal  days  when  a  nation  was 
divided,  as  now,  into  hostile  bands  calling  themselves 
SociaUsts,  Individualists,  Tories,  Radicals,  and  other 
totem  names,  each  convinced  that  it  holds  the  true 
faith,  and  each  ignoring  the  common  interests  of  the 
nation  for  the  narrow  and  sectional  interests  of  its 
own  denomination. 

I  have  granted  that  youth  will  always  be  divided  in 
ideas,  for  without  that  there  would  be  no  liberty,  but  I 
have  a  theory  that  the  way  of  division  may  in  future  be 
vertical  rather  than  horizontal.  Now  it  is  clearly  hori- 
zontal. Straight  lines  are  drawn  between  classes  so 
that  they  are  Uke  the  strata  of  world-old  rocks.  But  a 
vertical  division  would  divide  industries  rather  than 
classes,  activities  rather  than  possessions,  methods  rather 
than  objects.  It  is  hard  to  explain,  unless  one  imagines 
a  nursery  full  of  children  playing  with  a  box  of  bricks. 
They  have  the  same  number  of  bricks,  and  each  one  de- 
sires to  build  a  high  house.  Some  build  in  one  way,  some 
in  another,  according  to  fancy.  But  they  are  all  building 
up  from  the  base  and  not  overlaying  one  another's  bricks. 
Their  differences  are  expressed  not  horizontally,  but  ver- 
tically. So  in  the  business  of  life  and  the  structure  of 
society  it  may  be  possible  to  build  up  from  the  common 
base  of  national  resource,  all  efforts  mounting  higher, 
according  to  varying  ideals,  and  not  overlaying  one 
another  and  crushing  one  another  into  the  hard  strata 
of  castes,  but  working  with  the  same  impulse  of  attain- 
ment, though  with  different  ideas,  different  methods, 
different  results. 

Germany  is  attempting  something  of  that  sort  in  the 

401 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

industrial  organization   by  great  combinations  of  raw 
material,    labor,    and    mechanical    energy,    building    up 
from  that  base  to  every  branch  of  manufacture.    There 
are  at  least  twenty  such  combinations  in  Germany  to- 
day, embracing  practically  the  whole  of  her  industrial 
life.    Their  common  impulse  is  to  restore  the  economic 
health   of  their   country   and   to   attain   industrial   su- 
premacy in  Europe.     It  is  true  that  there  is  still  the 
under  dog  and  the  top  dog  in  that  vertical  system,  and 
that  German  labor  is  badly  paid,  but  within  the  great 
German  trusts  there  is  such  a  general  desire  for  effi- 
ciency,  and  such  a  general  spirit  of  service,  that  the 
wages  of  the  men  are  not  being  considered  as  subject  to 
the  old  ruthless  laws  of  economics,  but  in  relation  to 
human  factors  of  efficiency — the  need  of  food,  the  need 
of  leisure,  the  need  of  health,  the  need  of  mental  satis- 
faction— and  because  labor  is  recognized  as  the  basis 
of  all  energy  and  the  source  of  all  wealth,  the  position 
of  labor    in   Germany  to-day   is  powerful  and  admit- 
ted,  and  it   is  by  consent  and   not    by   tyranny   that 
its  wages  are  arranged.    In  each  factory,  and  in  each 
bank,  indeed,  there  is  a  council  which  represents     he 
interests  of  the  employees,  puts  forward  claims  for  in- 
creased wages,  better  conditions  of  service,  and  so  on, 
and  in  spite  of  the  German  spirit  of  discipline,  and  the 
industrial  autocracy  of  men  Hke  Stinnes,  these  repre- 
sentatives are  given  a  fair  hearing  and  in  most  cases  the 
claims   are  conceded   if  based  on  the  interests  of  the 
business,  the  first  principle  of  which  is  efficiency.    Upon 
such  lines  as  that,  the  lines  of  co-operation  between  the 
various   branches   of   industrial   activity,   youth   might 
organize  a  new  system  of  service  which  would  eliminate 
some  at  least  of  our  present  evils  by  greater  equality  of 
reward  for  good  service  (though  not  absolute  equality 
which  would  destroy  initiative)  and  by  giving  workers 

402 


THE  CHANCE  OF  YOUTH 

greater  interest  in  their  toil  because  a  real  partnership 
in  the  progress  and  profits  of  the  industry. 


VIII 

Looking  with  unprejudiced  vision  at  the  problem  of 
Hfe,  it  is  possible  that  the  younger  generation — that 
new  spirit  which  I  call  Youth,  though  its  leaders  may 
not  be  beardless  boys — will  largely  abandon  industri- 
aUsm  as  we  now  know  it,  and  reshape  civilization  on 
simpler  and  more  natural  foundations.  It  is  indeed 
likely  that  we  are  seeing  the  last  of  the  industrial  era 
as  it  is  composed  of  monstrous,  overcrowded  cities  filled 
with  people  who  live  on  the  exchange  of  artificial  com- 
modities and  unnecessary  luxuries,  and  sustained  by 
the  joyless  labor  of  men  and  women  in  unhealthy  fac- 
tories where  their  toil  is  machine-minding  and  their 
activity  of  mind  and  body  limited  to  the  damnable 
iteration  of  some  small  gesture.  This  will  sound  like 
heresy  to  the  big  manufacturers,  but  I  believe  that  hu- 
manity is  already  in  revolt  against  that  kind  of  labor. 
They  are  breaking  away  from  its  deadening  influence. 
Limitation  of  output,  and  the  claim  to  short,  and  still 
shorter,  hours,  are  but  symptoms  of  a  general  detesta- 
tion of  grinding,  unimaginative,  and  inhuman  toil. 

The  war  with  all  its  horrors  was  not  without  one  great 
joy.  It  liberated  masses  of  men  from  their  machine-like 
life,  took  them  back  to  nature,  gave  them  liberty  of 
movement,  change  of  scene,  infinite  variety.  Millions 
of  men  who  had  that  experience,  feeling  their  humanity, 
decline  to  go  back  again  to  the  dead  mechanism  of  their 
previous  work,  or,  if  they  go  back  for  sheer  need  of  bread, 
use  the  strike  as  a  means  of  temporary  hberation,  and 
go  slow  in  their  effort  of  production.  The  economic 
change  in  Europe  is  likely  to  destroy  big  cities  as  well  as 

403 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

big  industries,  or  at  least  to  diminish  their  size  and 
importance. 

Both  of  them  depend  for  their  life  largely  upon  the 
exchange  and  manufacture  of  luxuries.  But  the  poverty 
that  is  creeping  over  Europe  will  not  permit  of  luxuries 
to  anything  like  the  old  extent.  It  is  idle  to  manufac- 
ture expensive  porcelain,  grand  pianos,  silk  robes, 
all  the  gauds  and  toys  of  rich  life,  if  there  is  no  margin 
of  wealth  left  to  buy  them,  and  that  is  happening.  It 
has  happened  in  Russia,  in  Austria,  in  Poland.  It  is 
beginning  to  happen  in  Germany,  in  France,  and  in 
England.  In  those  first  three  countries  I  have  mentioned 
and  in  others  that  I  have  lately  visited,  like  Italy,  the 
reality  of  wealth  is  in  the  hands  of  one  class.  Richer  than 
a  Russian  noble  with  millions  of  rubles  (worthless  as 
waste  paper)  is  the  Russian  peasant  with  a  plot  of  earth 
from  which  he  receives  a  crop  of  grain  or  on  which  he 
feeds  a  flock  of  sheep.  Luckier  than  the  aristocracy  of 
Vienna  (watching  their  clothes  wear  out  and  their  flesh 
wear  thin)  is  the  Austrian  peasantry,  getting  enough  to 
eat  out  of  their  soil  and  ready  to  sell  their  surplus — not 
for  money,  not  for  wads  of  paper — in  exchange  for 
boots,  plows,  tobacco,  smocks,  or  other  garments  for 
their  women. 

There  is  a  growing  hostility  among  the  peasantry  in 
many  countries  to  the  city-dwelling  folk.  They  call 
them  parasites,  and  names  not  so  nice  as  that.  FeeHng 
in  Austria  was  so  bitter  that,  rather  than  sell  their  stuff 
to  Vienna,  some  of  the  peasants  burned  their  surplus 
stores  of  food!  The  great  industrial  cities  in  England 
are  not  threatened  with  such  hostility,  for  England,  alas! 
has  destroyed  its  peasantry.  But  they  are  threatened 
with  starvation.  They  are  already  besieged  by  the 
menace  of  economic  death.  Their  manufactures  are 
not  being  bought  much  in  the  world's  markets.  Their 
export  trade  is  dwindling  down  to   nothing   in   com- 

404 


THE  CHANCE  OF  YOUTH 

parison  with  their  needs  of  life,  for  these  great  popula- 
tions of  English  industrial  cities  depend  for  their  food 
upon  the  exchange  of  imports  for  exports.  There  is  not 
enough  food  produced  in  England  to  last  for  three 
months  on  fair  rations.  All  supplies  for  the  other  nine 
months  have  to  be  bought  and  paid  for  in  foreign  coun- 
tries. They  can  only  be  paid  for  by  excess  of  exports 
over  imports.  Therefore  if  the  export  trade  of  England 
does  not  recover  mighty  quick  (and  German  reparations 
will  not  help  recovery!)  there  will  be  an  exodus  of  starv- 
ing folk  from  Manchester,  Wigan,  Sheffield,  Cardiff,  a 
hundred  other  cities.  The  factories  will  be  deserted  for 
the  fields  again.  Life  will  be  simpler,  more  primitive  in 
its  conditions  and  amusements  (if  there  is  to  be  any 
kind  of  fun!),  and  it  will  be  the  task  of  youth — the  new 
leadership — to  reconstruct  national  life  on  a  ground 
plan  of  agricultural  industry,  as  in  the  springtime  of  our 
history.  Perhaps  the  individual  will  be  happier  again, 
and  Merrie  England  will  be  filled  with  song  and  laughter 
which  were  silent  when  machinery  whirred  above  its 
wheels. 

Civilization  may  not  work  out  that  way — it  is  im- 
possible to  forecast  the  near  future,  still  less  the  distant 
vision,  but,  whatever  happens,  youth  has  its  chance  of 
building  anew,  on  cleaner,  straighter  lines,  with  ideals 
of  beauty  and  human  happiness,  and  spiritual  service, 
broader  than  the  boundaries  of  a  caste  or  class,  nobler 
than  the  interest  of  wealth  or  wages. 

Science  must  be  the  servant  of  youth,  and  not  its 
master;  machinery  must  not  overpower  men.  In  the 
last  war  human  courage,  physical  excellence,  the  highest 
virtue  of  manhood,  were  at  the  mercy  of  big  engines. 
At  the  tug  of  a  string  twenty  miles  away  by  some  low- 
browed churl  in  charge  of  a  gun,  a  knight  sans  peur  et 
sans  reproche  was  made  into  a  mess  of  blood  and  pulp, 
without  a  chance  of  self-defense,  without  warning  of  his 

405 


MORE  THAT  MUST  BE  TOLD 

peril,  as  he  lay  asleep  in  a  cottage  or  joked  over  his 
bowl  of  soup. 

Science  used  its  secrets,  not  for  human  happiness,  but 
for  misery  and  destruction.  The  very  victory  of  the  air, 
won  entirely  by  the  valor  of  boys  playing  pranks  with 
death  high  above  the  earth,  was  used  for  the  increase  of 
human  slaughter  and  not  for  joy  and  liberation.  Even 
now,  after  the  war,  with  its  bloody  agony  still  fresh  in 
the  imagination  of  peoples,  scientists,  betraying  their 
souls,  are  at  work  in  laboratories,  in  the  United  States 
and  in  England,  inventing  devilish  gases  to  enlarge  the 
area  of  their  spreading  poison  for  "the  next  war,"  which 
is  now  in  preparation  by  dark  minds.  There  are  experi- 
ments of  pilotless  airplanes,  controlled  from  wireless 
stations,  and  equipped  with  clockwork  bombs  for  the 
dropping  of  the  poison  vapors  which  will  choke  whole 
cities  and  blast  all  vegetation  and  any  kind  of  life 
where  it  falls. 

Youth,  if  it  has  any  new  spiritual  purpose,  any  valor 
for  the  rescue  of  humanity,  will  declare  war  upon  scien- 
tists who  work  with  such  evil  intent,  will  rescue  science 
itself  from  its  lunacy,  and  dedicate  it  anew  to  the  service 
of  human  happiness. 

There  is  much  to  be  done  by  youth,  no  lack  of  worlds 
to  conquer.  A  crusade  of  health  is  a  desperate  need  of 
our  days,  for  disease  is  creeping  apace  over  many  peoples 
and  countries,  eating  into  the  physique  of  the  white 
races  and  ordaining  a  new  massacre  of  innocents.  Tu- 
berculosis, rickets,  horrible  plagues  that  have  their 
origin  in  filth,  and  a  general  decadence  of  physical 
standards  caused  by  ill  nourishment,  overcrowding, 
lack  of  exercise,  stinking  conditions  of  life,  threaten  vast 
populations.  In  England  war-time  conscription  revealed 
an  alarming  degeneracy  of  physical  quality.  The  third- 
line  troops  were  a  poor  and  weedy  lot  in  many  battalions, 
arousing  the  astonishment  and  contempt  of  Dominion 

406 


THE  CHANCE  OF  YOUTH 

troops,  who  said,  "Something's  wrong  with  Mother  Eng- 
land if  these  are  her  sons!"  I  shall  never  forget  the  ap- 
pearance of  the  bantam  divisions  on  the  British  front 
in  1916.  They  were  recruited  from  the  undersized  fel- 
lows of  the  industrial  districts,  and  their  average  height 
was  about  five  feet.  Some  of  them  were  smart  little 
fellows,  with  the  spirit  of  Hop-o'-My-Thumb,  keen  and 
valiant,  but  many  more  were  stunted  in  mind  as  well  as 
in  body,  with  button  heads  and  weedy  legs,  hollow  chests 
and  match-stick  arms.  When  they  came  into  General 
Haldane's  corps  he  went  down  their  lines,  pointing  his 
stick  at  those  obviously  unfit  for  fighting  ranks,  and 
put  back  two-thirds  of  them  for  work  behind  the  fines. 
French  peasants  watching  the  Bantam  Brigade  marching 
up  the  roads  cried  out  in  pity :  "  Cre  nom  de  Dieu!  UAn- 
gleterre  envoie  ses  enfantsi"  They  thought  these  little 
undersized  men  were  boys  from  school. 

England  and  France,  above  all,  must  look  to  their 
natural  physique.  The  best  of  their  men,  the  flower  of 
their  youth,  were  cut  down  in  swaths.  The  unfit,  the 
**C  3"  class,  the  poor  weeds  of  city  life,  were  left  alive 
to  be  the  fathers  of  the  next  generation.  Only  by  a 
national  system  of  physical  training,  and  by  a  return  to 
natural  conditions  of  fife,  shall  we  restore  the  old  stand- 
ards of  our  race  and  raise  the  splendor  of  our  youth  again. 
It  is  up  to  youth  to  defend  its  own  rights  to  physical 
excellence,  to  raise  itself  to  heroic  heights,  and,  having 
gained  that  glory  of  manhood,  to  refuse  in  their  souls  to 
let  it  be  destroyed  again  in  the  hard  wastefulness  of 
senseless  wars. 

The  youth  of  the  new  world  that  is  coming  need  have 
no  fear  that  peace  will  rob  it  of  romance  and  adventure. 
The  building  of  that  new  world  upon  the  ruins  of  the 
old;  the  reshaping  of  social  relations  between  classes 
and  nations;  the  pursuit  of  spiritual  truth  and  beauty; 
the  killing  of  cruel  and  evil  powers;  the  conquest  of  dis- 

407 


MORE  THAT  IVIUST   BE  TOLD  g 

ease;  the   resurrection   of  art   and    poetry   and    lovely  j 

handicrafts;  the  calhng  back  of  song  and  laughter  to 
human  Hfe;  the  joy  of  flight  made  safe  from  death;  the 
prolongation  of  human  life  by  new  discoveries  of  science;  , 

and  the  reconciling  of  life  and  death  by  faith  re-estab- 
lished in  the  soul  of  the  world — will  be  adventure  enough 
to  last,  let  us  say,  a  thousand  years  from  now.  , 

That  is  the   chance  of  youth,  standing  now  at  the  ' 

open  door,  wondering  what  there  is  to  do  and  which  | 

way  to  take  to  meet  the  future.    God!    If  I  had  youth  j 

again,  I  should  hke  that  good  adventure,  and  take  the 
chance. 


THE    END 


ZJ. 


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